If you're still undecided be proud. You've created the most crucial and competitive election campaign and outed all the hidden agendas. You've institutionalized crackpots. You've made blathering idiots out of pollsters and pundits. This one's for you.

"Under normal circumstances, undecided voters break against the incumbent this late in an election. However, these are not normal circumstances. This is a time of war," said Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell Read the rest on Yahoo news

Now decide and VOTE!

Want more Beat Bush Bumper Stickers? Go here

Hello friends and visitors. I apologize for not posting more often. Between starting a new job, the sudden death of a colleague here at the university, helping with WoW's launch, obsessing over the American elections and Blogger being particularly cantankerous lately I haven't done much posting. I promise to start up again soon with some post-election levity or gloom, depending on who ends up being elected.


Whatever happens on that score, I hope for a fair and unvarnished, decisive electoral process. The preservation of the integrity of our democracy is much more important than any one or any two candidates in any given run for office. The idea that the 2000 election was not an anomaly is very difficult to think about, but I do. A lot.

I took a quiz on the internet that determines what leader your personality resembles and this is the result.

I'm going to have to think this over. (smile)

It is truly amazing that so many landmark archeological and paleontological discoveries occur in China. Or is it? Is the dinosaur-bird linkage the root of the mythology of the Dragon? Will we in fact discover that dragons, so to speak, really existed? If so, the answer is in China. Many questions, few answers, constant fascination.

Ancient Bird Fossil May Suggest Link with Dinosaurs
Fri Oct 22, 2004 04:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists in China have found a 120 million-year-old fossil of a baby bird which is believed to have died just before it hatched and which could shed light on the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

The discovery of the bird, with a well-developed skull, large curved claws and feathers, could also give an insight into when complex behavior like caring for helpless young first began to evolve.

It could lend credence to the idea that birds of that era, like dinosaurs, were sufficiently developed at birth to function on their own immediately they hatched.

The discovery was described by Zhonghe Zhou and Fucheng Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

More at Reuters Science Reports

If you have a foreign face in China, you're American, regardless of whether you have even been there. We don't have the right to vote in America, but it damn well affects us.

At DisOriented

Michael Moore filed a theft complaint with the Lansing City Police today stating that "someone has stolen both the brains AND the sense of humor from the Michigan Republican Party."

More at Moore

Ever feel a little woozy or out of synch? This report says that the rotation of the earth warps space-time as evidenced by orbital variance of satellites. Since satellites and other rotating celestial bodies, man made or otherwise, also have a frame-drag influence, it could also explain some of the weirdness on Terra Firma. Just remember: nothing is as it seems. The Dervish belief that reality can be affected by spinning may indeed have some substance.

Warped Satellites Prove Einstein Theory

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Einstein was right -- again. Satellites that have been pulled slightly off their orbits show that the Earth is indeed twisting the fabric of space-time as it rotates, scientists said on Thursday.

They said their findings are the first to directly measure and prove an important aspect of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity -- that a rotating body warps and twists the "fabric" that combines the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time.

"As the Earth turns, it is actually twisting space-time with it. Near Earth, the twisting is greater," said Michael Salamon, a physicist at NASA in Washington.

More at Reuters

Its a peculiar priority, but it funds game developers, which is not so bad. Imagine a government so concerned with the mental character of its youth that it invests in healthy entertainment. I wonder what they'll think up next?

China to spend $340m on 'healthy' computer games
AFP
October 19, 2004
BEIJING: China, worried that its youth is being corrupted by foreign online games, plans to spend up to US$240 million ($340 million) to develop healthy indigenous ones, state media said Monday.

Rather than imported games with a high content of sex and gore, the idea is to get young Chinese interested in more refined products, some of them based on classics of the nation's literary canon, according to the Xinhua news agency.

More at The Australian

When I said in a previous post: I have to admit it was so disheartening to see Maria Shriver at the RNC I certainly didn't think I'd ever feel vindicated. Lysistrata lives? Politics make irksome bedfellows sometimes.

Schwarzenegger Says Pro-Bush Speech Cost Him Sex

Tue Oct 19,11:50 AM ET Oddly Enough - Reuters

MONTEREY, Calif. (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Monday that his speech backing President Bush at the Republican Convention in August resulted in a dramatic cold shoulder from his wife Maria Shriver, a member of the very Democratic Kennedy family.

"Well, there was no sex for 14 days," Schwarzenegger told former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta in an on-stage conversation in front of 1,000 people. "Everything comes with side effects."

The crowd roared with laughter, but the governor may have been serious: he has said little in public to back fellow Republican Bush since then. Panetta, a Democrat, had asked him how Shriver, whose uncle was U.S. President John F. Kennedy, had reacted to his praised but partisan prime-time convention speech.

The governor referred to Shriver several times in the 90-minute conversation.

"I don't know why I watched the presidential debates," he said. "If I want to watch a smart liberal Democrat and a Republican leader argue, all we have to do is go out to dinner. They were lucky. They only had to do it three times." more here--funny stuff

I like Arnold's sense of humor about himself.

Tibetan people posess a radient ethnic beauty, not just of appearance, but demeanor, grace, gentility, an extroverted, mischevious nature. The people from the roof of the world now have a three year old controversial beauty pageant, which has made international news. This lovely or anti-traditional news, however you look at it, lives behind the veil of censorship that is part of everyday Chinese life. Tibetan or Tibetan-advocacy websites are blocked in China and so are any headlines containing the word Tibet, if you search for them on the internet. I couldn't even find a picture of Miss Tibet because every site that had one was blocked. [update] I asked an American friend to find one for me and email it, so here she is:

The contest is as much about politics, some say, as beauty. It certainly is. The organizer himself makes no bones about the political insinuations. Everything is political in China. And outside: in one of the articles below, Tibetan exiles express explicit political sentiments -- such as those offensive to the Chinese government --- while the a spokesman for the exiled Dalai Lama intimates that the Miss Tibet pageant is a free enterprise that has nothing to do with HH.


Split over Tibetan beauty pageant

Critics of the Miss Tibet contest see it as a cultural betrayal

October 12, 2004
by Vanessa Walker

It must be one of the strangest beauty pageants in the world. The people are living in exile, the monk-Prime Minister vehemently disapproves and the swimsuit round is held at a secret location. Welcome to Miss Tibet, a beauty contest so controversial that last year only one contestant was brave enough to enter.

Now in its third year, the pageant has split the Himalayan town of Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama and the centre of the Tibetan community-in-exile. In the weeks leading up to Sunday's final, posters demanding Tibetans boycott the show have covered billboards.

Opponents claim it is offensive to Tibet's Buddhist culture. They also accuse the organiser of mimicking the worst of Western ideals and humiliating Tibetan women.

In internet chat rooms, monasteries and cafes throughout the Tibetan diaspora, passionate arguments have been raging about the virtue or otherwise of beauty contests. The opposing sides are prominently represented in Dharamsala, a town of 23,000.

In one camp is Miss Tibet creator Lobsang Wangyal. A flamboyant organiser of dance parties, he passes for the town's only spin-meister.

He says the aim of the contest is to bring international attention to the plight of the Tibetan people, now in their 45th year of exile from Chinese-occupied Tibet.

"When one reads the words Miss Tibet, Tibet is thought of as a separate entity and not part of China," he says.

"Miss Tibet is a positive thing for Tibet. Any coverage of Tibet is beneficial."

He also says the contest, which had five contestants this year, is a much-needed foray into modernity for Tibetan culture and an "empowering advance" for Tibetan women.

The most outspoken critic of the contest is Samdhong Rinpoche, the scholar-monk who is the Tibetans' first Prime Minister-in-exile. He says that the pageant damages the case for Tibet.

"Tibet is respected because of its spirituality and its cultural traditions in the world. The Tibetan cause stands on that basis," he says.

"Just imitating Western culture will never help the Tibetan cause -- it will always damage the Tibetan cause."

He rejected beauty contests as anathema to the Buddhist view. "We are firm believers in the fact that the body is the home of the conscience," he said. "Beauty is skin-deep and there can be no such contest of individuals wherein inner virtues could be put to the test."

Given how divisive the issue is, the five women who entered were both brave and ambitious. One, Kelsang Dickey, was so determined to compete that she escaped from Tibet, trudging through the snowy Himalayas in freezing rains and hiding to avoid Chinese police.

But it was a computer engineer born in exile, Tashi Yangchen, who won the crown and the 100,000 rupees ($3100) first prize. She pledged to bring international attention to Tibet, but admitted it would be difficult.

Miss Tibet cannot yet enter Miss World or Miss Universe; instead she is relegated to second-tier beauty pageants such as Miss International Tourism.

The other winner was Mr. Wangyal. The competition drew capacity crowds of about 2500 people. A candlelight vigil held the same night to protest against the imminent execution of a renowned lama in Tibet named Tulku Tenzin Delek drew 250.

That's modernity.

also see
http://www.blogger.com/app/www.misstibet.com (blocked in China)
and
http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2002/8/10_8.html (also blocked in China)

Another story, from The Guardian

I love this headline:

Miss Tibet Generates Lively Yak Among Exiles
10/3/2002

The main topic for discussion among Tibetan exiles is no longer the recent thaw between the Dalai Lama and China, but next week's first Miss Tibet beauty
pageant.

One critic says it is "ill-timed, undesirable [and] uncalled for". Others insist that the event is a great step forward for a country that effectively vanished 50 years ago. Either way, the main topic for discussion among Tibetan exiles is no longer the recent thaw between the Dalai Lama and China, but next week's first Miss Tibet beauty pageant.

The event is being held in the north Indian town of Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and Tibet's government in exile. The winner will be named next Sunday after a
closed-door swimsuit round and a public question and answer session. But the event is as much about politics as beauty.

Organisers say they hope that the participants will draw international attention to the continued plight of Tibetans living under Chinese occupation. The normally conservative Tibet Women's Associa tion has given its blessing to the event, with the motto "Women with wisdom from the roof of the world".

"As long as it is handled properly, I see nothing negative in it," Dolma Gyari, the female deputy speaker of Tibet's exiled parliament told the Guardian yesterday. "The only thing that surprises me is that none of the judges appear to be Tibetan."

But some Tibetans have described it as immoral, "un-Tibetan" and "un-Buddhist".

The competition's organiser, Lobsang Wangyal, has dismissed them as short-sighted. Young Tibetan women were not just interested in traditional culture, but in a full range of experiences, he said.

"There is a tendency for Tibetans to be only seen as a people in struggle against the
Chinese, as a culture predominantly made up of Buddhist monks and nuns, as nomads who herd yaks," he said. Some 120,000 Tibetans had fled since 1959 and were building successful lives abroad, he said.

But critics have pointed out that 90% of Tibetan women still live in Tibet, and are therefore unable to take part.

"Miss Tibet is another way of saying Free Tibet," said Tenzin Deki, a student whose photograph appears on the competition's website, www.misstibet.com

Last night a spokesman for the Dalai Lama's office distanced the political and spiritual leader from the event. "It is a private enterprise. We have nothing to do with it," he said.

I've learned to love America as only an expat can--a deep love for which arms length is sometimes required. Each day since the arguable election of our current president has been one for soul searching, searching the part of my soul that is American. I have only once before seen our country so deeply divided. We're losing who we are and what we stand for.

I realized that reading this:
from The Turkish Press

Two New York Dames Come to Blows...
October 06, 2004
NEW YORK: A 62-year-old New York woman has filed a lawsuit against a 86-year-old paragon of political passion alleged to have hit her with a cane following a fight over George W. Bush election stickers, police said Tuesday. The suit alleges "harrassment" and says the 86-year-old former university professor "struck" the 62-year-old with her walking stick because she took the election stickers to the woman's posh New York building.

The run-in took place Sunday at the door of a building on Central Park West.
The alleged victim told reporters she was delivering the Bush stickers to a friend when the alleged presidential detractor suggested she "get out of here with that trash."

She tore up one sticker and then hit the younger woman on the behind with her cane. The alleged assailant told local media she had never struck her rival. "I didn't use my cane. We exchanged some words and pushed one another back and forth," the otagenarian said.

Partisan passion is running high. That's not always a bad thing. It's a time to be a paragon of political passion. But watch these little old ladies with canes!

A feelgood story in a feelbad world; abandoned Chinese twins with a birth defect are reunited in America.

Babies Adopted Separately Likely Twins

Sun Oct 10, 8:55 AM ET U.S. National - AP

TUCSON, Ariz. - Two families who adopted Chinese children and brought them to separate homes in Arizona and Alabama have discovered that the toddlers are siblings and almost certainly twins.

read the rest

From the Arizona Daily Star

A May post here,
Laundry Label Calling President an 'Idiot' a Hit reported that goods from a small bag manufacturer in Oregon featured an unusual message with the French translation of the wash/care instructions. Here's a picture of it.


Thanks to Stephen in Italy.

An obituary in the IHT introduced me to a facinating Chinese calligraphy I'd never heard about. Nushu is a secret written Chinese language intended only for women and the [presumed] last woman to use it has died.

Obituary: Yang Huanyi, a writer of coded women's script
Douglas Martin NYT Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Yang Huanyi, the last woman to communicate secretly with others in a rare linguistic script used exclusively by Chinese women, died Sept. 20 in her home in Hunan Province. She was believed to be in her late 90s.

The Xinhua news agency reported her death, saying that estimates of her age ranged from 95 to 98.

The script, Nushu, represents the language spoken in Jiangyong Prefecture in southern Hunan. Women, who were denied education for many centuries, used it to share feelings, including fears about arranged marriages, husbands and, of course, mothers-in-law.

"By writing, so much suffering disappears," Yang said in an interview with Northwest Asian Weekly in 1996.

Xinhua called Yang the "last practitioner" of Nushu. However, Orie Endo, a language professor at Bunkyo University in Tokyo and a leading scholar of the writing system, said that at least two other women still used some Nushu.

She said Yang was the last woman to use Nushu to communicate with other women under an ancient oath of secrecy.

from ancient scripts.com:

Some Nushu characters are taken from Chinese, while others appear to be invented, but all are rendered in a style much more cursive than written Chinese. In addition, the characters are "thinner" than Chinese characters, which tends to be square-shaped. Also, like Chinese, Nushu is written from top to bottom in columns, and the columns are written from right to left.

MSNBC had an article on it on February 24th that I found blogged on Brainysmurf

PUMEI VILLAGE, China - Nowadays, it would be called empowering women. But back then, centuries ago, it was just a way for the sworn sisters of this rugged andtradition-laden Chinese countryside to share their hopes, their joys and their many sorrows.

Only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to their husband's homes after marriage. So somehow -- scholars are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to communicate. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece, from girlfriend to girlfriend -- and never, ever shared with the men and boys.

Provenance unknown has another article on nushu with links to other sites

Nushu - In 1982, a Chinese teacher discovered a language spoken only by women. It has been passed on for centuries; locals in Jiangyong County, in China's Hunan Province, call it nushu — literally, "women's script." (By far the best description of the language I've found is on World of Nushu, a website maintained by a Japanese scholar.) [page no longer exists, Ed.]

Today there remain only two women who know the language. In 1999 they were the topic of a documentary shown at a Vancouver film festival (which in turn inspired one article in London's Sunday Times, and another in the Guardian.)

Now, China's People's Daily reports that "a protection zone will be set up" to preserve the language. The BBC sheds some light on what this might mean: The Chinese government has earmarked some $1 million to build a museum and compile a dictionary for the endangered language.

An editorial in today's L.A. Times about the current U.S. president is titled Is He A Dope? Frankly, I think this is going a bit too far toward giving dopes a bad name.

A headline in today's lowbrow New York Post, SUCK-UPS FOR SADDAM'S OIL is foreplay for a huge story, based on a report by report by U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, about how Saddam traded oil vouchers for the support of officials and organizations in various countries around the world, including the U.S. and Britian. The Moscow Times headline CIA: Russia Got Rich Violating Sanctions reports how named high-ranking Russians helped Saddam amass an estimated $11 billion with these vouchers, while lining their own pockets to the tune of an estimated $130 million.

In the Hong Kong edition of China daily, the provocative headline Shangri-la's consideration makes Beijing blush titles a story about how Diqing (Shangri-La) has actually and effectively banned the use of plastic bags to remedy an ecological scurge on the lovely surroundings, this as a sly sideswipe at Beijing for its puny efforts to improve the urban environment in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games.

I was not going to add to the cyber-ink on the first presidential debate; personally, I can't think of much that hasn't been said. But I found the quintissential comment here on The Talent Show. Have a look and if you haven't been there before, add another bitingly brilliant blog to your daily read.

October 9th will be John Lennon's 64th birthday.
(Will you still need me,
Will you still feed me, when I'm 64)

I wonder if he would have considered this an appropriate gift?

Fri Oct 1, 1:25 PM ET Reuters

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge has ordered the FBI to turn over files on John Lennon to a California professor who said the documents show Britain's domestic spy agency shadowed the late Beatle's political activities.

Rejecting the U.S. government's national security claims [???! - Ed.] U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi on Tuesday brought to a close a 23-year battle waged by Jonathan Wiener, a University of California professor who requested the information for a book he was writing shortly after Lennon was murdered in 1980.

[...snip...]

The documents revealed efforts by President Richard Nixon to deport Lennon to silence his anti-war activities in 1971 and 1972, Wiener said.

I went to see John Lennon in 1969 in Toronto, Canada where he was waiting for permission to enter the U.S. American authorities were balking, ostensibly because of a marijuana possession conviction in U.K. I and other writers campaigned heavily to allow him to come to the U.S. and eventually he and Yoko got their visas.

"Lennon was planning a national concert tour through the United States to urge young people to vote," Wiener said. "Nixon got wind of this and ordered Lennon deported so he couldn't do this concert tour." [grrrr - Ed.]

Wiener said the documents ordered released this week probably contain similarly embarrassing but not damaging information collected by the British government.

"All they've told us is these pages contain information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality," Wiener said. "We think these are MI5 reports on Lennon's left-wing political activities in England."

The U.S. government has 60 days to announce whether it will appeal the ruling.


read the rest

Y'know, I think the government has a lot more important things to do in the next 60 days.

Eventually these records will be released. Even though it gets scrappy sometimes, in America, the truth, if the people want it, eventually comes out. Freedom of information is a hard won and deeply principled right - that's correct, right, not privelege - which is why some of us are having a hissyfit because Google is conceding to filtering (censorship) of news sources in its Chinese language news search. I think their excuses are lame and self-serving and even though they were not likely to have prevailed, they could have taken a stand. See stories and posts at China Digital News, The Peking Duck, Brainysmurf and Techweb

Eat with your chops Dicks
Get there the hard Wei
Smile at wrong Anns Sirs
And don't act surprised

Test 'fore you buy Guy
Check out the seams Jeans
Don't get overcharged Lars
Just bargain it hard

Don't talk about Tai Juan
Or even Hong Kong
Or floating the yuan Ben
Just trust in the gov

Don't mention that La Ma
That's going too far Pa
The internet's blocked Pop
It's for your own good

Its not a Ro Lex
And it's not Chanel, Belle
Knockoffs are cool Jules
Dig those DVDs

So much TV Ji
But not much to see Lee
Its like that at home Joan
So just don't complain

They all study English
Not many can speak it
How can that be, Bea
They all passed the tests

Crowd on the bus, Gus
And don't make a fuss, Gus
There's always the train, Jane
So travel in style

Don't bother to whine Don
When you're cut off in line John
When hailing a cab Babs
Be quick on the grab

Get ready to wait Nate
Don't lose someone's face Grace
Be patient and kind Bryan
Don't pay any mind

Go climb the Great Wall Paul
Cruise Tiananmen Square Claire
Have a beer in Shanghai Guy
Take in all the sights

Don't drink the water
You'll get Mao's revenge, Ann
Immodium's vital
Keep plenty on hand

50 ways to live in China
Some are yours and some are mynah
Enjoy all the red Ned
And you'll be well fed!

by Ellen Sander
Happy National Day Holiday

Last week saw demonstrations and arson against Chinese business interests in Elche, Spain when locals erupted over what they considered unfair competition in the shoe trade.

The story is all over the Chinese media and I found one Australian link, but so far, not much, if any visibility in Western media.

This from Bignewsnetwork

On Thursday, around 500 people demonstrated in the Carrus industrial zone at Elche, Spain chanting "Chinese out" and torched the warehouse of a Chinese shoe shop and a container causing losses of 800,000 euros (US$984,000).

Protests continue in a Spanish center of shoe manufacturing over two Chinese-owned companies.

The BBC reports that hundreds of people joined demonstrations Friday in Elche. Last week, protesters set fire to two warehouses and a truck belonging to Chinese companies.

Spanish shoemakers say that Chinese manufacturers have been undercutting them on price and, even worse, in some cases selling their goods even more cheaply on the black market without paying tax.

The violence has angered the Chinese government, which has demanded compensation and protection for its citizens in Spain

.Chinese Online Media Coverage:
China Daily
Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Tibetan Monk Shot Dead in Qinghai, Officials Appeal for Calm
RFA (site blocked in China)
[Saturday, October 02, 2004 08:29] WASHINGTON

— The leader of a Tibetan monastery in western China has been shot dead after he and other monks demanded that local police pay for medical treatment they required after being beaten in custody.

According to two witnesses who asked not to be named, a Chinese police officer, identified by the surname of He, shot and killed the head monk from Golok Topden Monastery on Sept. 14. The monk was identified as She Tse, sources told RFA’s Tibetan service.

The shooting is said to have occurred at the Darlag (in Chinese, Dari) County police station after a group of monks including She Tse went there to demand compensation for medical expenses they incurred as a result of being beaten in custody, the sources said.

Golok Topden Monastery is located in a traditionally Tibetan area under the administration of China’s western Qinghai Province.

read more at phayul.com