Month: June 2007

  • Circumstance and Pomp

    I t’s commencement week at ZheDa = ZJU = Zhejiang University. (Since the Chinese language doesn’t have letters, it can’t form “initials”, but it does have syllables, each corresponding to a character, so it can leave out all but a few key ones, leaving a shortened, but euphonious expression.) A little late by American standards. […]

  • Bigbrotherliness

    [mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] Some of my readership (i.e. one of the four) have asked about internet access in China. Let’s consider Wikipedia, about whose inaccessibility I have groused previously. The public facts go something like this: in the fall of 2005, when Microsoft and Yahoo and Cisco Systems, were falling […]

  • Earth Tones

    Three months on, and not a single health problem, unless you consider a marked increase in farting a health problem. Not surprising to me, given that my intestinal flora has doubtless been wholly revamped and my dietary intake qualitatively changed. Though I’m not aware of any mathematical models that would predict the direction of the […]