Comments by bolkonsky

That would be "Ally Financial," not "All Financial," the re-branded GMAC.

"Impossible Black Tulip."

It refers to the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci's world map written (in Chinese) for the Wanli emperor in 1600. There's quite a bit a metaphor if you think about it.

@MS

Nice use of the subjunctive in the second line of your second paragraph. You must not be British.

I taught Oral English in a rural village in Hunan. The level of English of my high-school students was miserable. In thousands of students, I never met one who could speak with any degree approaching proficiency. The clearest reason to me is the poor quality of Chinese English teachers. While many of them did speak English well, almost all had very strong accents or simply couldn't speak the language they were teaching. I ended up basically teaching 50/50 in Chinese and English so that there would be some comprehension. Ideally I wouldn't have to use Chinese at all, but that would be useless—the students never understood anything beyond single words.

I saw it. It was awful. Mao zedong had a perfect Beijing accent.

I think the chief editor is going through a divorce. This article is strikingly clear as a metaphor.

RGL,

I don't understand where your analysis of how well Huntsman speaks mandarin is coming from. Do you speak mandarin? This is important to me because I have spent many years learning it myself. In the aphorism you point out at 4:30, not only is accent his utterly, utterly american (rhotic instead of retroflex) he also completely mispronounced a word: he said zhì and not jì, which is like saying bat instead of cat, and his lǎo sounds much more like a second tone than a third. Pronunciation and tones need work.

I like Huntsman a lot, but I'm gonna pull my hair out the next time I hear a reporter mindlessly quote other reporters and say he's fluent. I would say he's about 30-40 percent there. I can't imagine his Min is good either, but I can't speak for that.

In a world where it's rare for white people to speak chinese, it might seem he's fluent because it's so strange. You can say he's conversational, or proficient in Mandarin, but definitely not fluent. Here's a Canadian, Mark Roswell, who's fully fluent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzpQWSU354

Actually that i.e should have been an e.g

I love how feisty some Chinese get when you attack Mao Zedong. You'd think you were talking about their mothers.

@East Wind
Please, please, please use less caps. It makes it sound like you're shouting, which just makes you sound like a crazy ideologue i.e CRUSH THE DOG HEADS OF THE SOVIET REVISIONISTS.

@EdgyInChina
Well said. I don't think enough people draw attention to the difference between Mao before communist control and after. Maybe it's that power corrupts, or that socialist systems work best on a small scale and when under attack.

yeah, this has got to be one of the most inane graphs I've seen the economist publish. I suggest a correlation between obesity rate and the US population... how striking the relationship!

I thought it was spelled "bejesus" not "bejaysus"

I don't think the stability argument can be understated, especially by someone who met with a bunch of officials for two weeks. I've been here for a year and a half in rural Hunan, and people are angry. The ONLY thing they have going for them is economic prosperity, and when that collapses, or even slows down, this place is going to blow.

Forced housing demolition, poisonous foodstuffs, and the widespread conviction that EVERY official is corrupt (one official, persecuted for bribery, was derided on the internet for only taking 10 thousand dollars over several years). People don't like living in a police state, but the government is a lot more afraid than it likes to admit. People don't like being controlled, and they're very aware what's going on. Just a few days ago martial law was declared in Xilinhot, because of ethnic violence.

The longer I'm here, the more I'm convinced about the fragility of this harmonious society.

Typical HBS, flashy and without real content.

It's actually kinda funny. You know a product isn't innovative when they have to devote a lengthy segment to it's wonderful screen cover (it's magnetic!) in their own marketing video.

an ipad is really cool, and in many ways very useful. but the ipad2 is practically the same thing. Faster you say? well yes, i can play games with high quality graphics now on the ipad2... oh wait, I would play those on a real computer anyway, gaming on an ipad is awkward. But now there's a camera! Actually, I think i would just use my smartphone rather than hold up an ipad to someone's face.

I like a lot of apple products (I'm writing this on my powerbook right now), but the ipad2 is simply hype. It's not magical or amazing. It's the same thing as the first ipad. The app store is the same, battery life is the same, multitasking is still non-existent, resolution the same, the price is the same. Its new features would be better delegated to other devices.

I suppose you will be able to buy a white one though.

Here's something I hadn't known: the word boob can mean something other than mammary gland. Stay classy, economist.

I'm reading the article on your soul.

I had to run to china to get work...

sometimes it seems everyone my age who is employed either has an amazing job or a horrible one. a generation of investment bankers and burger flippers.

I think the issue is rather simple. The most important thing is to lower the unplanned pregnancy rate. With the lowering of this rate, abortions, children born in poverty, single parents, medicare expenses... they all go down. So this should be the clear goal: Lower the unplanned pregnancy rate.

How to arrive at this?

I believe its pretty well established that higher use of contraceptives lowers this rate. Sure, more young people are having sex, but is this really hurting anyone? Other than their souls?

This is what I find telling about the pro-life movement: they are more interested in sexual sin than preventing abortion. Otherwise they would also be agitating for more use of contraceptives themselves, not for abstinence-only education. If you were really pro-life, you would be trying get your daughter on the pill, even if you know she's more likely to have sex. Because if there's one indomitable aspect of human nature, it's sexuality. Teens will always find a way, with or without parent's consent. And although condoms may be available in every drugstore, for whatever reason, teens taught abstinence-only are less likely to use them.

I don't know how the use of contraceptives became divorced from the pro-life movement (I guess it was never really there, considering anti-contraceptive groups grew out of religious groups), but I find it reprehensible. People are more interested in moralizing than actually making the world better. But I suppose keeping Suzy chaste is more personally motivating than the vague notion that a fetus is being snuffed. (On a side note, Pro-lifers should also be vegetarian, because that delicious bbq once belonged to an organism far more mentally sophisticated than a human fetus, yet suffered a horrible life and death). So if you really advocate reducing pregnancies, and therefore abortions, you should be supporting a comprehensive sex education.

And Restrained Radical, abstinence only education has been criticized by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association, all of whom prefer comprehensive sex-education. Advocates vehemently support contraceptive use because it works.

Geeze, when did I became so liberal...

Well written, WW.

Is there a single picture in existence in which he isn't gazing off into the distance?