Shenzhen Ren

Yep, I’m still over there.  There’s original writing, political snark, reports from Amsterdam, and DOOMWATCH (you can never be worried enough).

Thanks for stopping by.  The few of you still reading have probably noticed that posts are down to one or two per month.  There’s not much new to report in Shenzhen, and work affairs have ramped up to a fever pitch.  However, I’ve got a few partners to help out with a post or three over at Dodgy Business, where I’ll most likely be for the near future.

I’m in a dodgy little village

In a dodgy little house.

I press a dodgy little button

with a dodgy little mouse.

I’ve got dodgy friends in Holland,

And frisky friends in Spain

And dodgy friends around the world

And likewise back again.

It seems our Glorious Bolivarian Revolution is finally beginning to generate as much heat as noise.  Whereas uncle Hugo Chavez had been merely stinking up the South American atmosphere like a bad, lingering fart, under the camera lights of Oliver Stone he’s now graduated to action hero, swooping in (in only one take, I hear) to “rescue” three hostages.  Actual Venezuelan hostages, held for years by FARC in Columbia though, are being ignored.

More favorable press, if you don’t look too closely, for the anti-American bloc of Chavez, Ortega of Nicaragua, Correa of Ecuador, and Morales of Bolivia.  Some observers have been warning for years that this clique of half-baked socialist revolutionaries would show ambition and agression beyond their throw-weight once they reached some halfway feasible critical mass, and sure enough, the recent fatal strike on Raul Reyes, the FARC commander, has provided a possible spark.

“This could be the start of a war”, says Chavez, and the river of money from oil and cocaine could just finance enough arms to set the whole region smoking.  Ironically, the Americans are providing most of the money on both counts.

“This could be the start of a war in South America,” Chavez said. He warned Colombian president Alvaro Uribe: “If it occurs to you to do this in Venezuela, President Uribe, I’ll send some Sukhois” _ Russian warplanes recently bought by Venezuela.

This is no small threat. In the past several years Chavez has spent , according to the Defense Intelligence Agency, $4.3 billion in weapons in 2005-2006, more even than China. This includes a Kalashnikov assault rifle (AK-47) factory licensed from Russia. For a nation not at war, this is hardly an auspicious sign.

This is the alliance many of us have warned of for some time. Chavez, Correa, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Evo Morales in Bolivia have been trying for some time now to form an anti-American bloc in Latin America but have no coherent ideology to counter the changes in the world.   read the rest from Douglas Farah

I’ve generally been a little conflicted over the wonders of cutting-edge technology, for a couple of main reasons.  First, I couldn’t see a lot of efficiency and productivity gains for quite a while:  When I tried to computerize my business in the early 80’s I spent $6,000 on a Compaq Plus computer (because it had a 10mb hard drive!).  I then spent about 1,000 hours learning new hardware and software, only to find it resulted in even MORE bits of paper laying around–the ones to remind me of what file I stored which bits in and what function of which program could be used to find them.  Then of course I found out that everything I had spent the time on was now obsolete.

Secondly, it’s obvious that technology can be used to accelerate the worst of behavior as well as the best, so it was always doubtful whether human lives would have a net improvement unless human “moral behavior” improved.

But I’m not so sure now.  My daughter just had a new baby son…..a photo of mom and baby appeared in my inbox 1 1/2 hours later, taken 30 minutes after birth with the father’s high-zoot phone.  Then today, home from the hospital, she commented on the challenge of trouble-shooting the little bugger, so I mailed back a link to “the secret language of babies” featured on an Oprah Winfrey show (babies make universal sounds indicating hungry, tired, gas, etc. but new parents hardly ever know one from the other).  Complete with excerpted video clip which will probably save her the cost of buying the DVD.  Oh, and C-section incisions are much smaller these days.

Priceless!  It’s really hard to find the downside in that kind of stuff.

Between all the hoo-hah in the runup to the Beijing Olympics (miraculous development story balanced against protest of Chinese involvement in all kinds of ugliness) and the US election campaigns, it’s hard to pick from satire-worthy events.  Besides, I have a real job these days, and hardly any time for blogging.  So here’s a little off-mainstream bit that should go in the annals of “odd ideas propounded for obscure reasons”.

Actually, I suspect the reasons may not be so obscure, for those who want to dig a little deeper ( hint: begins with P and ends with olitics), but there’s a “sociology professor and pastoral counselor to Bill Clinton” making the case that Darwin’s work is generally racist.

Taken apart thoroughtly at Chicago Boyz, thankfully.  Have a taste here and click through to the full article:

“I find the op-ed interesting because virtually every statement about Darwin in the piece is dead wrong.

Let’s see:

“Those who argue at school board meetings that Darwin should be taught in public schools seldom have taken the time to read him. If they knew the full title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, they might have gained some inkling of the racism propagated by this controversial theorist.”

Campolo seems unaware that the word “race” has shifted meaning since the mid-1800s. Today, race means “ethnic group” but in Darwin’s day, the words “race”, “breed”, “species” and “subspecies” were often used interchangeably because scientists of the day lacked a modern understanding of genetics. For example, in Origin (p22-23) Darwin writes:

It has often been loosely said that all our races of dogs have been produced by the crossing of a few aboriginal species but by crossing we can only get forms in some degree intermediate between their parents and if we account for our several domestic races by this process we must admit the former existence of the most extreme forms as the Italian greyhound bloodhound bull dog &c in the wild state. Moreover, the possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Many cases are on record showing that a race may be modified by occasional crosses if aided by the careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character but to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct races would be very difficult. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life By Charles Darwin [Emphasis added.]

Clearly, in the subtitle Darwin is just using “race” as a synonym for “species” or “breed”. (As a side note, the use of race to mean sub-species really brings home how alien people in the 1800s considered those of another race to be.)”

Much more in the original piece, just for your casual education!

I gave a guest lecture yesterday in a classroom which normally hosts Economics classes.  In the top-center position on the wall was a poster portrait of…..not Chaiman Mao, not Lord Keynes, not Karl Marx, but…..

Milton Friedman!

I’m still trying to absorb the significance of this one.

(at least it wasn’t Murray Rothbard)

I’m not making this up.  Last night I stepped out on my balcony and noticed some odd lights in the sky.  You know how it is when you see an unexpected sight….your mind tries to fit things into already-known facts and experiences, and sometimes it jitters around for a while until things fall into place.

“Oh, look, a cluster of red and blue airplanes!”  Except, uh, airplanes don’t hover.  Except airplanes don’t usually have blinking rows of red and blue lights at the same time.  Except airplanes don’t usually appear 5 or 6 together over Shenzhen.

“Oh, then it must be helicopters.”  But 5 or 6 helicopters in a sort of irregular holding pattern?  Now I see that all the light-shapes aren’t the same:  One is mostly round, with mostly red lights; another is sort of delta-wing shape with alternating red and blue, and blinking.  Another shape is too hard to identify, because it’s small and moving around.

In fact, they all seem to be moving a little, sometimes approaching my place, sometimes moving away.  “Well, what the hell will I do if they come really really close?  Run inside, or try to get a better look, hoping I don’t get transported away for the anal probe?”

Dammit, it’s got to be some kind of advertising for something.  Maybe helium balloons with little batteries and lights?  Kites?  Nah, too far up for kites.  I gave up.  This morning after sunup, I finally got to see the one that was still up there.  It was a large delta-wing kite.  So I guess lightweight L.E.D. and NiCad batteries can go up in kites now to terrorize the ignorant.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

I returned from a trip to the States recently, and as usual I noticed a few things differently when I returned.  Actually, some of them ARE different.

TREATS:  The Exotic Foreigner food store is now stocking my favorite coffee, Mandheling, as well as a new line of organic grains, including some nice cracked corn for making grits.  I missed out on grits during my Southern upbringing, because my family were too citified for such hearty, simple country fare.

MASTER DRIVERS:  Instead of the usual surly and confused taxi drivers, I’ve ridden with some real virtuosos.  The last one was an old pro who drove like a dancer or orchestra conductor:  Perfect timing, daring yet completely in control.  A dip and a dodge here, exclaiming “ha-ha, very good-ah”, a swerve and a dart there, “ha-ha, good-ah!”, then calmly reading his newspaper during traffic light waits.  I decided to tip him, he was so efficient and fast, so I handed him 5 above the fare, and before I could stammer out a “wo gei ni”, he darted off with a “ha-ha, goodah!”

AIR:  At my apartment, there are stars visible at night.  Quite a few of them!  I’m told it’s because of the new gasoline formulation, but I can’t see how that would account for such a change.

CHANCE MEETINGS:  I accidentally shared a table with a Scot at an Irish pub, and after some talk, he offered me a great job at a British-run institution, paying over double my current salary.

So this week I stared up at the stars, had a stiff jolt or two of good coffee, a hearty bowl of grits, hopped a taxi to the office and quit my job.

Merry Christmas!  Welcome to Shenzhen, hope you happy every day!

Speech by Jacques Chirac, Nov. 2000;

For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organisation which France and the European Union would like to see established.

Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference, Dec. 2007;

A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.” 

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm

Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”

Local Transport Today (UK), Dec. 2007;

Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. 

“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

Steve J. has this job inspecting security doors at the factory before they ship.  I suppose he spent some time trying to teach them how to do it correctly and avoid mistakes.  Finally, he just rejects the flawed products and sends them back to the production line.  “too short; send it back”,  or “not straight, can’t ship this one” or “screws in the wrong hole!”.  Sometimes the same worker who gets a rejection one day brings in another door with exactly the same flaw for approval on the next day.  Someday, the supervisors will figure out that the best way to make money is to do it right the first time, not waste time re-making doors, and make the customer happy by producing correctly; but maybe not until after losing a customer.  With a little luck, down the line it might even become a principle, but it’s possible that will take a long time and many lost customers.

This week, both my vehicles had flat tires; the electric bike and the race bike.  The go-fast bike had a tiny pinprick leak, but the family bike had a completely shredded tube from hitting a stob in the road.  So I took them to the local shop where I have friendly relations with the proprietor.  His air pump was broken and he had no new tubes my size, but he sent his son with me into the old village where there are a number of odd shops.  Sure enough, around a few corners there was a hole-in-the-wall with lots of bike tires hanging on the wall and miscellaneous supplies.  Figuring I would just go home and fix one bike on my own, I bought a couple of patches and a half-used tube of glue: for 10 yuan.  Now I know this price was high, but I was in a hurry and just wanted to get the transaction over with and move on.  Back at the other shop, the son and father were laughing about me getting skinned by the guy, but I didn’t care….I was making progress and it was a small amount.

Then my wife showed up with our tire pump, and found out what I had paid.  She marched me up to the hole in the wall, where I found they also had tubes for the electric bike!  Unfortunately, they wanted 35 yuan (about American price), and my wife lost her patience with the owner.  They had one of those “elevated” discussions that looks like a prelude to fisticuffs, sweetie threw the patches and glue at the fellow and he threw my 10 yuan back at me.  “What did you tell him?” I asked.  “I told him he’s a stupid pig:  you buy bicycle things all the time, but now he lost a good customer by trying to cheat.”  She’s upper-class Chinese (well, in her own calculus of high-education vs. “low-education people”) and feels some duty to “teach” about these things.

So the question:  What are the chances the fellow in the little shop will give the next foreigner-on-foot a fair deal?

Oh, and the other question:  Have you checked the fire doors in your building?