A moot point?

Like perhaps most people, I am jaded with news about Iraq, most of it bad. But I think this is worth mentioning. I once was taken a bit by surprise when a friend of mine argued for the war in Iraq, claiming that we took the war to them, assuming taking the battleground at least in part away from the States. This might be a valid point. But a recent report by the National Intelligence Estimate just came out, as reported by the NYT: "A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." And further, "The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document." As was to be expected I suppose.

Pops and Paige Coming to Carouse in Peiking

GREAT news! My father and stepmother, Paige, are coming to Beijing at the end of October to visit and travel. I think it will turn out to be an exciting trip for them since the last time my dad was in Asia was during Vietnam and only to dock for short periods and since Paige, as far as I know, has only travelled outside of the States to Mexico. Boy are they in for a treat! And I can't wait to introduce them to China. We are also going to Shanghai for a weekend since they got a special deal for a roundtrip ticket. This will be the first time relatives have come to visit me in Asia and I thoroughly look forward to it. I even have an extra cell phone for them in case anything comes up, i.e. they get lost, need a translation, or whatever since I still have to work full-time while they are here and thus unfortunately can't accompany them the whole time.

Shenzhen, Hong Kong, LSAT, Beijing

Well, this is it. One week to go before I take the big test. Preparation has been productive and rewarding. I have to say I went a bit manic on it and have taken to date thirty-three practice tests. I still have nine I could take with six days left, but am growing a bit weary, as one could imagine. And besides, so far so good...Let's hope my score on the real test matches my average score on the practice tests!

What a pain-in-the-ass date they chose though! It is during one of the biggest national holidays in China, and with the country becoming more affluent, that means more people able to travel, which means more demand for a limited supply of tickets. Maybe I should have just waited for the December test, which I can take right here in Beijing. Well, at least if I am not happy with my score I can retake the test in December, right? Anyhow, in order to try to minimize traveling expenses and time, I am taking a train straight from Beijing to Shenzhen, a 24-hour ride with a hard-sleeper ticket, which costs approximately $55, one way. The frustrating thing is that you can only buy train tickets four days in advance (I think this policy is changing soon, if not already, though the rules are unclear) and only in the city from which you are leaving! This considerably limits my options and chances of even getting the ticket. Plus, you can imagine waiting in the half-mile-long lines for buying such a ticket with the possibility of not even getting it.

Shenzhen is seemingly a very interesting city. In order to understand why, you have to understand that Hong Kong is a special economic zone (we all know that, I know) and that for a Chinese mainlander (that is, all Chinese living in China excluding those in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao), a special visa, or some permit, is required to go there, which severely limits the number. For us foreigners, you have to have a single entry visa either as part of your current visa or separately. Shenzhen is interesting because it is the border town, the buffer as it were between Hong Kong and the mainland and therefore, I would imagine, is a kind of an amalgam of both: cheap but with that unique Hong Kong energy and express. From Shenzhen it is apparently quite easy to go to Hong Kong for foreigners. The trouble is coming back. It would be comparable to a US citizen going to Tijuana: you just drive across the border without stopping but upon return you need a valid ID and are subject to inspection. For those from Hong Kong entering the mainland, I am not exactly sure but I would be highly surprised if they can't come and go as they please.

So what I decided to do was buy an earlier ticket to go down thus enabling me enough time to buy a ticket from Shenzhen to Beijing. But I soon realized this is impractical since there is no guarantee of a ticket no matter how early I arrive to buy tickets and the day I would like to return is the busiest traveling day during the vacation! Well, then, what to do? I settled on buying a one-way plane ticket from Shenzhen to Beijing, leaving on the day of my test. It is a 2hr 50min flight and cost $150 (and will be delivered for free any minute now). That is a hefty price to pay being inflated for the holiday and I could have gotten a ticket two days later for $105, but I figure I can skip the lines, the chances of not getting a train ticket back, and the 24-hour ride back thereby eliminating all of the ambiguities, expenses involved, and time issues. Plus, I have a good Chinese friend in Shenzhen that I will be staying with (Thank You WangWei!!!) so I don't mind arriving a bit early. And, this will give me about day to explore Hong Kong a bit before I head back to Beijing to prepare applications and get ready for a 9-6 workweek.

Some Spontaneous Words

Some spontaneous words I wrote during the last four years, mostly in Mongolia:

• Life is complex, the human soul an imbroglio! The grass grows, the rain comes, the river runs, and dries, and dies. Mountains rise, mountains wash away—indeed—the earth constantly changes, metamorphosing a billion years becomes one month in the life of caterpillars. As the world changes, we live and die, let live, let die. But who sees the silhouette of the butterfly at dusk, at dawn? Life goes on….

• Did you see it? There it goes! A seed was traveling, carried with the wind. Where will it land? This my good and humbled friend, is life.

• I can only offer you that which god has offered me: a mind, a heart, a soul; and a voice to express them all.
  

• One taste of the lavish life, like a potent drug, leads you always longing for more.

• That place where you find yourself and lose yourself. The only place where security and insecurity fall away, and you are left with only your self. This is the place I strive to live in, to base my relations and reality—‘tis the alpha and omega, the genesis of my being. Boundaries collapse and where am I to go but nowhere. That is beauty, that is pure feeling, pure self.

• What would wisdom be without sharing it?

• Like the innocence of a star, you’ve touched me.

Quote of the Week #6

“Greater than any army is an idea whose time has come.” –V. Hugo

Ain't that the truth.

Applying for a visa to America? Well,....

Certain standards and minimums undoubtedly are rigorously implemented and enforced, and I am sure their application depends on the type of visa. But uniformity can fly out the window. On the individual level, some visa officers like pictures, others emphasize financial ties to the host country and thus a mass of documents, though they may not understand them. Most I am sure are extremely suspicious of lying and some perhaps are having a bad day. So, perhaps like everythign else, the human element once again enters and can affect the outcome of a visa application. On a general level, also coming as somewhat of a surprise, is that different consulates in one country could have different procedures or standards from others in that same country, maybe different leniencies or less/more emphasis on certain factors (apprarently there is not much communication between them to standardize uniformity, each consulate with a different ambassador with different whims, dispositions, goals, ambitions, etc. and each consulate rotating visa officers about every two years), making the chances of approval that much more obscure and unpredictable. The vagaries are frustrating and that is one part (and a small one at that) of an immigration lawyer's job: to understand the differences between unspoken consulate policies in order to offer the best chances of maximizing the success of clients. I just find it amusing how there could be such significant differences, thus perhaps giving the whims of an individual more power than the organization. Nevertheless, I should disclaim that the fundamental standards enforced by all of them do ensure some uniformity, however negligible they might be.

Metadata?

Perhaps you have heard the word metadata before. I really never heard of it until yesterday, when it came up in a conversation about Adobe Acrobat. I never knew that metadata existed in word documents, but indeed it does:

"Most programs that create documents, including Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office products, save metadata with the document files. These metadata can contain the name of the person who created the file (obtained from the operating system), the name of the person who last edited the file, how many times the file has been printed, and even how many revisions have been made on the file. Other saved material, such as deleted text (!!) (saved in case of an undelete command), document comments and the like, is also commonly referred to as "metadata", and the inadvertent inclusion of this material in distributed files has sometimes led to undesirable disclosures."--Wikipedia

The implications that metadata can have on a legal case are enormous. In fact, apparently some cases, after metadata had been discovered and then applied to documents in closed cases, have been completely overturned(the DNA of documents?). That is amazing. Who would've thought? So next time you exchange those anger-charged words for nicer euphemisms, or sneak in a change in a document, be on the alert. Could come around to bite ya in the arse.

It is also interesting to note that since the whole metadata discovery has come about, lawyers apparently are using Adobe Acrobat (a program which can either be manipulated not to store it, or does not allow it, or just shows the changes outright--I'm not quite sure yet which or if all) when exchanging documents such as contracts with the opposing lawyers, say during negotiation. Whether it is stored in e-mails, I cannot say but I would like to find out.

Go Eliot Spitzer!

Delightful news! Spitzer won! Now governor of New York, once NY Attorney General, this guy deserves kudos, respect, and admiration. This is a man who is principled, charismatic, charming, impassioned, and extremely articulate. This man not only brought the once little-heard of but extremely important job as Attorney General into the limelight, but did so with an unabated energy and panache, taking on cases that AGs typically avoid. This led to successes in exposing and eventually prosecuting successfully those companies, corporations, etc. responible for things like the excesses of Wall Street (late trading and market timing, aka insider trading), white-collar crime, securities fraud, internet fraud, environmental destruction, corporate scandals, inflating stock values, and many others. In a word, he believes America was built in part on and still has the potential to maintain high national standards of conduct. He deserves admiration and I hope one day he will run for president. You can watch a clip of him here.

The first time I heard about this man, I was watching a CSPAN2 broadcast of him speaking at some event. I was amused by one of the stories he told: Having a family dinner one night, he asked his daughter, who I believe is in her early teens or something, what her favorite word is. She said "I don't have one dad but I know what yours is." Oh yeah, he said, what is it? "Fiduciary duty"! Very telling.

Some fun and insightful international proverbs!

The early bird gets the worm. But the second mouse gets the cheese!
--??

A courtyard common to all will be swept by none.
--Chinese Proverb

A thief believes everybody steals.
--Proverb of Unknown Origin

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
--Chinese proverb

He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.
--Chinese Proverb

If the patient dies, the doctor has killed him, but if he gets well, god has saved him.
--Italian Proverb

Never marry for money. Ye'll borrow it cheaper.
--Scottish Proverb

Think with the wise but walk with the vulgar.
--German Proverb

Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.
--Old Muslim Proverb

Want a thing long enough and you don't.
--Chinese Proverb

Truth like oil eventually rises to the surface.
--Spanish Proverb

In the news...

Some recent news I thought might be of some interest (a little on the cynical and pessimistic side, I must say):

• Accepted by other deans and counselors with astonishment and delight, Harvard university, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into selective universities. --NYT

• Over the last decade or so, the FDA has quietly become an agent of organized scientific fraud designed to promote the profits of drug companies at the expense of public health. One of the ways this is accomplished is by rigging drug review panels with industry "experts" who maintain financial ties to pharmaceutical companies. All FDA drug review panels have members with such ties, and the FDA insists it has no obligation to disclose the ties.--NewsTarget

• Did you know that school shootings almost always involve children who are taking
  antidepressant drugs?--NewsTarget

• Halliburton, the notorious U.S. energy company, sold key nuclear-reactor components to a private Iranian oil company called Oriental Oil Kish as recently as 2005, using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. sanctions. The story is particularly juicy because Vice President Dick Cheney, who now claims to want to stop Iran from getting nukes, was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s, at which time he may have advocated business dealings with Iran, in violation of U.S. law.--Truthout/Globalresearch.ca

• As hunger and homelessness rise in the United States, the Bush administration plans to get rid of a data source that supports this embarrassing reality, a survey that's been used to improve state and federal programs for retired and low-income Americans. In 2003, the Bush Administration tried to whack the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on mass layoffs and in 2004 and 2005 attempted to drop the bureau's questions on the hiring and firing of women from its employment data.--New Standard/Oneworld.net

• Though record numbers of federal workers have been sounding the alarm on waste, fraud, and other financial abuse since George W. Bush became president, the agency charged with defending government whistleblowers has reportedly been throwing out hundreds of cases - and advancing almost none. Statistics released at the end of 2005 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility led to claims that special counsel Scott Bloch, who was appointed by Bush in 2004, is overseeing the systematic elimination of whistleblower rights.--PEER website

• Governments deny global warming is happening as they rush to map the ocean floor in the hopes of claiming rights to oil, gas, gold, diamonds, copper, zinc and the planet's last pristine fishing grounds. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005 found "the first clear evidence that the world ocean is growing warmer," including the discovery "that the top half-mile of the ocean has warmed dramatically in the past 40 years as the result of human-induced greenhouse gases."--Mother Jones

• The total number of people infected with HIV/AIDS in America is about 1 million with 40,000 people becoming infected each year. In China, the total number of people infected is about 650,000 with about 70,000 becoming infected--Avert.org

• San Francisco may get universal healthcare. --USA Today

Apologies to those who have commented!

Holy crap! I just discovered that in order for a comment to appear, I have to accept it by opening up a separate tab ("moderate comments") on my blogger account! Damn, sorry to those of you who left comments without a response! I had no idea people were even commenting! I appreciate all of your comments, critiques, suggestions, opinions, etc. and always welcome them! And thanks to Angel for inadvertantly making me aware that they were not showing up! I will respond to them in the following days and make a greater effort to be more observant for christ's sake...once again, apologies. And thanks!

勉强

我今天有点悲哀因为我舍不得放弃一个珍惜的关系， 一个留给我一个特别深刻的印象的女孩。 真奇怪，不舒服这种感觉：我爱她可是我不恋爱她。 你说奇怪吗？从来没遇到这种的情况：怎么分辨喜欢和爱情。我知道你想,诶,当然知道!可是有时不是那么容易. 其实我觉得最大的问题不是怎么分辨而是怎么会放弃一个强烈的欲望：我知道我们没有在一起的将来， 我知道我要一个人回家了， 那为什么有这个感觉呢？ 是不是因为我太吝啬吗？我只想她属于我吗？怎么这么矛盾啊。

在人类生活中只有两个循环的规律：凝聚和分开。 例如: 出生（分开母亲）， 恋爱，毕业， 丢珍惜的东西， 亲戚出世， 结婚，离婚, 自己的死亡, 什么的。现在就是。 还得说有情有可原的情况 (extenuating circumstances, 掩饰情形)。也可能我还是害怕把我自己变成一个责任的人。

反正，我只希望她会找到一个开心的生活， 希望她找到一个人好心好对她的行为尊重的男孩。 我不能给他这种的生活,这种的情况. 所以不要吝啬,不要只想我自己, 而要为她着想. 放弃吧.

Chinese Inventions, Discoveries, etc.

A list of some Chinese inventions, discoveries, etc. (from "Riding the Iron Rooster"):

• mechanical clock (Tang dynasty, lost and then reintroduced from Europe)
• first to make cast iron and soon after invented the iron plow
• Chinese metallurgists first to make steel
• crossbow
• first to notice all snowflakes have six sides
• umbrella
• seismograph
• phosphorescent paint
• spinning wheel
• sliding calipers
• porcelain
• stink bomb
• chain pump (1st centure A.D., still in use)
• kite (2000 years before one was flown in Europe)
• movable type
• devised first printed book ("Diamond Sutra", 868)
• possibly the printing press (Gutenberg got it from Portuguese, who got it from Chinese)
• suspension bridge and first bridge with segmented arch
• playing cards
• fishing reels
• whiskey
• first sailors to use rudders
• paper money
• fireworks
• lacquer
• first people to use wallpaper
• paper (including toilet)
• wheelbarow
• first design of steam engine
• poison gas
• mechanical pump
• compass
• gunpowder

Wow! And this list is not comprehensive.

The Top 10 Things Food Companies Don't Want You to Know

Huge thanks to NewsTarget.com, one of the most informative sights I've found on the web. Please go here.

Walmart Unionized in China?

Perhaps you've heard about the unionization of Walmart in China. At first glance, it sounds like an epic development for China and for the workers of Walmart. Funny how Walmart becomes unionized in a country that little tolerates dissent. One would conclude that western companies then are willing to do almost anything to tap the China market. However, it's not that simple and one easily understands why Walmart has been 'unionized' in China without as much protest by the anti-union megastore. According to an article in the Mercury News,

"But less is here than meets the eye. The federation [Federation of Trade Unions] is not a union alliance in the Western sense. It's controlled by the ruling Communist Party, allows no competing labor unions, rejects free elections of its leaders and often goes to bat on the side of management over workers under the guise of harmonious economic development.

It's also a federation in a fix. It struggles to gain dues-paying members in the thriving private sector and craves international legitimacy. Almost no union confederation abroad recognizes it officially."

Well, great PR deal for Walmart, who now looks somewhat more benevolent on the surface. But it seams to be little more than a small step on a very long road. I suppose at least something is better than nothing. In any case, for those of you who shop at Walmart (and I must admit I have before), this is part of what keeps the prices down. And, Walmart is, after all, creating tons of jobs and gives all of its workers medical and retirement benefits, maternity and paternity leave, as well as other benefits, which certainly is not bad for China.