Finding the Perfect Dog - There is no such animal. So, stop looking. By Jon Katz: "Trainers say it requires nearly 2,000 repetitions of a behavior for a dog to completely absorb it." How many reps do people need?

In Central Asia, an American Professor Finds Hostility Spiked With Cynicism By ELINOR BURKETT

"Where have we attacked Muslims?"

"I don't know. That's what people say."

"In Bosnia and Somalia, we were supporting Muslims," I said. "And in the war against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, we were supporting Muslims who were attacked by other Muslims."

A stony silence, more of bewilderment than hostility, enveloped the room, as if I'd just announced to a group of American students that the earth wasn't round, or that Utah was just a cartographer's fantasy. It was the first of many retreats in the face of an unaccustomed challenge to official truths.

Tired and cranky, I filled the void by turning a table: "Can you explain to me why there's never been a call for a jihad against Russia?"

The room tensed. "Why should Muslims be angry at the Russians? The Russians are our brothers."

"But your 'brothers' have been attacking Islam for decades," I countered, ticking off the list: the suppression of Islam in Central Asia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Chechnya.

"But the Russians are poor," they responded.

Via aldaily

At (Your Name Here) Arena, Money Talks

Still, the notion of public companies spending millions on such endeavors rankles Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, an independent research firm that specializes in corporate governance. She wonders about shareholder returns from these deals.
'Are they about pride?' she said. 'Ego? Are they about schmoozing or returning value to shareholders? I'm not sure that brand recognition, unassociated with the product or service you sell, is valuable. If Nike wanted to do it, I could see it, but why a bank would do it is beyond me.'

Definitely ego.

To get your attention, they say, Mold blamed for breathing problems, but then, "Insufficient evidence for other ills, study finds"

Respiratory problems, including some asthma, can be caused by mold, but an extensive study released Tuesday failed to indict the fungus for a host of other, often major illnesses that some have sought to associate with it.

I remember some consultant on TV claiming that mold would be the next big real estate problem, after asbestos. Maybe not.

For Soldiers Back From Iraq, Basic Training in Resuming Life

Most of all, the moods of new veterans may be changeable. As more soldiers are sent to Iraq for repeat tours, the stress grows more complicated. Experts on veterans' issues say public attitudes also affect how well soldiers and their families cope with resuming ordinary lives. In recent weeks, with mounting rebel insurgencies, a growing scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and the beheading of an American in Iraq, the polls have shown support for President Bush's policy slipping.

Well, how about this: I support the war in Iraq.

Pawns in China's Power Struggle: Taiwan, HK Line Reflects Rivalry By Philip P. Pan

China's former president, Jiang Zemin, is strengthening his hold on power by promoting a hard-line approach toward Hong Kong and Taiwan, making it more difficult for the country's new leaders to consider concessions on either issue, according to sources in the government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party...

A prolonged struggle for power between Jiang's allies and those who support Hu has created a dynamic in which any senior leader who argues for even a slightly more moderate policy risks being attacked by rivals in the other camp as too weak to govern, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity and said they favor neither faction.

Sounds like the US "drug war"--everybody loses.

Pentagon: China Rethinking Its Strategies By ROBERT BURNS:

The speed with which U.S. ground forces captured Baghdad and the prominent role played in Iraq by U.S. commandos, have led China to rethink how it could counteract the American military in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan, the Pentagon says.

The Chinese also believe, partly from its assessment of the Bush administration's declared war on terrorism, that the United States is increasingly likely to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan or other Chinese interests, according to the Pentagon analysis.

"Authoritative commentary and speeches by senior officials suggest that U.S. actions over the past decade ... have reinforced fears within the Chinese leadership that the United States would appeal to human rights and humanitarian concerns to intervene, either overtly or covertly," said the Pentagon.

I'd say that's a good thing, except I don't want Chen Shui-bian to draw the US into a war.

A couple of Kaohsiung-area restaurants that we visited recently: Karabour 卡拉包 Thai Food, at 54 Chung Cheng Rd. in Kaohsiung wasn't bad. The other was the "European-style buffet" (歐式自助餐; I think they're just trying to convey that it's not the usual cheapo cafeteria style) Shanghai Vegetarian Food 上海素菜館 in Pingtung, half an hour from here. Those are old prices on the website; now it's NT$220 weekends and holidays per person for all you can eat, but they've got a huge selection, I was impressed and I'm not much a vegetarian. I was told the other locations aren't as good, though; we'll check 'em out.

According to the Economist's Cultural evolution, a lot of culture is random:

Dr Bentley is finding that random copying seems to drive many forms of cultural change, from patterns on ancient clay pots to preferences for breeds of dog.

For some, this is disappointing. Many students of cultural evolution hope to find analogies with biological evolution by natural selection, not just random drift, when they look at cultural change. Hence the appropriation from biology of the term "mutation rate". There is even a word for what they hope will turn out to be the cultural equivalent of a gene. This word is "meme".

Another blow for cultural critics.

According to Mark Magnier,

Hu and Wen control the economy, social issues and most areas of foreign policy, while former President Jiang Zemin retains control over the military and most issues related to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

As of May 29, 2004

SARS Cases in Asia Show Labs' Risks: As Scientists Battle Diseases, Accidents Can Infect Public By David Brown

The Beijing case is the most mysterious and troubling. There, a 26-year-old graduate student developed SARS in late March, just two weeks after she started working at the virology institute. In mid-April, a 31-year-old man in the same lab also came down with the disease. Neither had been working with the SARS virus.

The graduate student went home to Anhui province, where she infected her mother, who died. The student then became ill enough to be hospitalized and infected a nurse. The nurse, in turn, infected five others -- three relatives, a patient and a relative of that patient -- in a "third generation" of infection.

Or so the Chinese claim. I think they're lying.

The biggest disease outbreak that may have arisen from a laboratory was the mini-pandemic of 'Russian flu' in 1977 and 1978.

Despite its name, that strain of influenza virus appeared in Tientsin, China, in May 1977. It spread around the world, causing mild infection that almost exclusively hit people younger than 20. Millions of people became ill, although overall flu mortality did not increase.

What is curious is that this virus had a genetic fingerprint virtually identical to a strain that had last circulated in 1950. Flu viruses evolve at a fairly predictable rate 'and it is extremely difficult to explain why the . . . strains . . . are so strikingly familiar,' a team of scientists wrote in 1978.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the 1950 virus was somehow 'genetically frozen' in nature -- possibly in ice or perhaps in some human or animal carrier that has never been discovered. The second is that it escaped from a laboratory in China.

Many scientists think the second is the more probable.

So what was that? An experiment in biological warfare gone wrong?

In Balancing U.S. Interests in the Strait, Ronald N. Montaperto blames Chen Shui-bian and Lee Teng-hui for Taiwan's loss of international recognition, and states that

Canberra, Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore all mistrust Chen Shui-bian. Their unofficial economic contacts with Taipei are regarded as a price to be paid rather than an intrinsic good. Mindful as they are of China's growing comprehensive national power, they are not willing to risk ties with Beijing for the sake of Taiwan. Simultaneously, they see the U.S. presence in the region as an effective counter to China's rise.

Accordingly, maintaining the effectiveness of Washington's relations with Beijing and Taipei is a matter of the highest priority. If the U.S. can balance Chinese insistence on the One China principle against the growing separatist feeling in Taiwan, and if Washington is able to uphold the commitment to a peaceful solution, it gains strategically. To the extent that it fails to do so, it loses. The effectiveness of U.S. strategic leadership is evaluated according to how well it "manages" the Taiwan issue. If Taiwan's future becomes the issue that forces the nations of the region to choose between the U.S. and China, American management will have failed and U.S. influence will diminish.

In At Arms Length: China's Move to Further Isolate Taiwan, Willy Lam says,

While the CCP leadership may for the near term lack a casus belli for the military option, Beijing's Taiwan policy has taken a radical--and possibly violent--turn. Li, who used to head the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted the Chinese leadership was switching from a houfa zhiren posture ("winning through crafting an ingenious reaction to the enemy's ploys") to a "strike first" policy. One disturbing manifestation of this new-found aggressiveness is the revelation first made by Premier Wen Jiabao in early May that Beijing was considering a National Reunification Law (NRL).

Chinese sources say it is well-known in Taiwan-related think tanks in Beijing that legal and strategic experts under the CCP Leading Group on Taiwan Affairs (LGTA), headed by President Hu Jintao, had begun drafting a statute on reunification more than a year ago. And at least one version of the law being mooted would obligate the central government and its military forces to "use whatever means to accomplish the holy task of national reunification." The Hu-Wen leadership is still debating whether the statue should contain a "deadline," say the year 2008, by which reunification must be accomplished.

Well, I'm spooked. I'm not sure of the origin of houfa zhiren 後發制人. Maybe it's a martial arts term?

Last night someone invited us for dinner here in Kaohsiung and introduced us to three women from the mainland and the guy who had helped them come over. Taiwan has all kinds of restrictions against mainland immigration and on mainlanders working, but they still come illegally. The guy who hired them explained to my mother-in-law that they weren't good looking enough to be prostitutes, so they worked (illegally) in other jobs. One of them volunteered that her marriage to a Taiwanese man was fake; I was surprised that she'd admit this to strangers. The other two women were also married, but they didn't say it was fake. Anyway, they said they could make more money here in a couple of years than they could in a lifetime in China.

The iced cappuccino 冰卡布奇諾 served at the Crown cafe 金鑛咖啡麵包 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan is absolutely delicious. And cheaper than Starbucks, which the couple of times I've had it didn't taste like proper cappuccino.

Soldiers Vented Frustration, Doctor Says By R. Jeffrey Smith:

Much of the language in Nelson's study supports the Army's contention that the abuses were a product of a distorted environment at Abu Ghraib last year, amounting to a wartime version of the malicious conduct by marooned children in the novel "Lord of the Flies." But the report is at odds with recent congressional testimony by top Army and military intelligence officials that the prison abuse involved only low-ranking soldiers and was not known by more senior officers...

A vindictive attitude was not the only psychological problem, Nelson wrote. "Clearly some detainees were totally humiliated and degraded" by people who were practicing a "perversive dominance." He said the events were "a classic example" of the formula that "predisposition plus opportunity" can produce criminal behavior.

"Inadequate and immoral men and women desiring dominance may be attracted to fields such as corrections and interrogations, where they can be in absolute control over others" in the absence of appropriate supervision, Nelson wrote...

It is important, Nelson wrote, "to remember dominance in and of itself is not improper. In fact, interrogators knowingly dominate their subjects and sometimes intimidate their subjects. But clearly, behavior at Abu Ghraib crossed the line."

Someone is sure to make the argument that dominance is never permissible.

I'm looking for a definition of 計較 in the sense of overly insistent on getting one's fair share. With some help, I've come up with calculating, mercenary, petty, and penny-pinching as adjectives, and haggle or dicker as verbs.

David Warsh writes:

This is, in truth, a remarkably difficult moment for the United States, in its embarrassment over the widespread prisoner abuse in Iraq. If American military police had not been prepared to act severely toward their more defiant captives, they would have been derided as innocents who didn't know how to conduct a war against an army whose leadership had been hardened by a long bitter war with Iran. Since they acted brutally, they have been derided for having been inhumane (as indeed they were.)

Yes indeed. Whatever we do is wrong--well, unless we disband our government and let the lights of freedom at the UN (like Cuba, Sudan, and um, France) govern us.

We made our corn pancakes, for which I brought WalMart's off-brand corn meal from the US.
Mix:
1 cup cornmeal
1 t salt
1 T sugar
1 cup boiling water
set aside to cool.
Beat
1 egg
add:
1/2 cup milk
2 T oil
and mix in to the cornmeal mixture.
Sift before measuring:
1/2 cup flour
resift with
2 t baking powder
mix in to the cornmeal mixture.
pan fry in frying pan, or in our case, a wok. My Sichuanese mother-in-law said they were just right, but my wife & sister-in-law said they were too salty.

Last week Brad DeLong quoted BHUSHAN BAHREE, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: "China's exploding demand for oil -- one factor that helped drive petroleum prices above $40 a barrel this week -- has put energy markets at increased risk of disruptive price spikes and crashes, according to a study by an influential forecasting group...."

Cecil on the Death Touch. He's dubious, but admits there may be something. I've read about people who believe their beatings by the Chinese secret police have caused such damage, but I'm still skeptical.