Two different arguments as to why increasing corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards isn't a good idea.

Here's some stuff on footbinding from the LA Times. It cites women who tell "of the pain involved in foot-binding, but also of pride in the beauty they felt they achieved." But it was beauty as defined by men. "Of course it was painful," said Wang Yixian, 78, casting back to her girlhood in Shandong province. "If you didn't bind your feet, you couldn't find a husband." And sadly,

Women who had their feet bound for most of their lives were told to stop as well, though their feet remained deformed. What they once were told was beautiful had become ridiculed as repulsive. Women who had endured pain to match male ideals of beauty were suddenly objects of derision--again by men. In either case, the women were powerless."I was a child and had no control when my feet were bound, and I had no control when I was told to unbind them," Cooper's interview subjects told her angrily.

The article in the Washington Post starts off

When North Dallas High School switched in the 1980s to what some considered old-fashioned mathematics books full of drills and review, achievement levels for many of the low-income and low-performing students at the Texas school soared.

I was happy to hear that, but even if:

Drills or projects, teacher-led or student-led lessons, traditional or progressive education -- the terms denote two learning styles that have divided American educators for almost a century.

In the final analysis, as the article says, the type of learning should depend on the type of learner. Now that's hard.

But my sourdough rye came out great, even though the potato-water sourdough wasn't very lively.

That paper's been keeping me busy. Then over the weekend we were busy going for a "hike" in Ferne Clyffe, watching a VCD version of Feng Xiaogang's "Be There or Be Square" and then invited friends over for supper Sun nite.

Oops. I wrote a paper (intended for publication) a couple of years ago, then put it aside, awaiting publication of an earlier paper of mine that I also wanted to cite. The years passed like arrows as the Chinese expression goes, and I forgot about it. Just found it. What else have I forgotten?

Now scientists tell us there is no biological reason to discourage cousins from marrying. This was no. 1 on the list of the most e-mailed articles in the NYT. It makes you wonder about it readers. (Hey, now I can marry my gay cousin. Wait a minute...)
Particularly since I seem to have a taste for queer food. That's food with "suspicious shifts of register" or something once banal that's now camp: like Joy of Cooking.

Unintended consequences of trying to protect children from earthquakes. It's hard to put risk in perspective. I wonder if they'll reverse their policy now.

The news about Taiwan's slush fund made it to the front page of the Washington Post--and includes information about payments to people like Paul Wolfowitz, currently deputy defense secretary, and others in the Bush administration. It was an understandable set-up from the Taiwanese point of view, but ultimately not a good idea, like a lot of Li Teng-hui's.

Update: here's lots of information. However hysterical the tone, it seems pretty much the same as the Washington Post article.

The science journal Nature has concluded that a controversial article it published last year on the discovery of genetically engineered corn growing in Mexico was not well researched enough and should not have been published.

Take your pick: the article was written by people with a religious commitment to an anti-biotechnology dogma, or the editorial statement was the result of an effort to undermine the Mexican corn study was the work of biotechnology advocates.

Eight years before Robert P. Hanssen was arrested for espionage, Russia lodged a formal complaint with U.S. officials that an FBI agent tried to sell secrets to a Russian intelligence officer. I'm starting to wonder if a lot of government organizations aren't flawed by their very nature: closed to competition, they get ever more sclerotic.

A scandal about Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's largely unsupervised $100 million slush fund, used to help with Taiwan's largely unofficial diplomacy. I hope the whole business leads to more accountability for government spending.

Society's difficulty with managing risk has caused safety to become one of Western society's fundamental values; people find it difficult to accept that some injuries cannot be prevented. As a result, scientific findings may come to be evaluated differently, particularly when a wide range of groups have great political and financial interest in a particular risk being considered hazardous. Regardless of whether something is a health risk, cultural mistrust of it can turn it into a liability risk.

A recent report about genetically modified crops by the UK's Royal Society's pointed out the total lack of evidence that they caused harm to humans but also gave great prominence to 'new' hypothetical concerns, simply to show that it is on the side of the public.

With regards to pro forma accounting: on a pro forma basis, most of us are doing pretty well.

Virginia Postrel suggests it's cheaper to buy a house in places where there are less zoning regulations. It's primarily current home-owners who support such regulations, which raise prices at the expense of those who want to buy houses. Well, we all like to protect ourselves, even if it's at the expense of others.

In China at least, it seems to be wealth rather than poverty that drives crime: Corrupt officials are taking more and more, so villages are more poor, and more people are turning to crime .

The other night we watched "Three Coins in a Fountain" (1954). Pretty shallow, and depressing to see that all the women cared about was getting married. Then I caught part of "The Ten Commandments" (1956), and even in the short 2 segments I saw there were a couple of segments showing women twittering about getting a man.

The baguettes made with Berta's moule were a success. The crusts weren't quite as crisp as usual, but I think that's because I didn't manange the water vapor properly. Also I kept moving the dough around after I'd shaped the loaves; next time I'll try putting them directly onto the moule. On the other hand, the starter I used had been frozen, but that didn't seem to affect anything adversely.

I've also made some sourdough with potato water; with the potatoes I made mashed potatoes that we ate with Chinese food leftovers. The sourdough didn't need any yeast at all, and developed in about 36 hours, rising up out of the black liquid like the surface of Solaris in the movie of the same name.

I've often argued that the question of Tibet gets more attention than, say, the Uighurs do.

Transnational charisma also hinges on a host of pedestrian factors that are nonetheless unusual among oppressed groups. Fluency in a key foreign language, especially English; an understanding of Western protest traditions; familiarity with the international political vogue; and expertise in media and NGO relations�all these factors are essential to giving leaders the chance to display their more ineffable qualities. Would the Dalai Lama appear as charismatic through a translator?