snail at your feet

Regain Entry

2008-11-28T02:39:00.001-08:00

Woot, reactivate my account here. Almost thought it was not possible. But after some hassle it is done.

I still like this place, having been absent for nearly two years. I had to abandon this blog because two years ago I was using a very old computer and posting here was a pain in the arse. Now I am using a new machine and utilizing the features offered is a breeze. I might just move back, partially. We shall see.

The blogging community I belong to in the past twenty two months is a bit noisy. Here things are quieter and more elegant. It is a different feeling.

Stumbling on a Korean Film

2007-02-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

Watched a South Korean film ("3-Iron") last night. I had thought that I rented a Chinese movie thanks to the Chinese characters in its title. (Both the Korean and Japanese languages have borrowed Chinese characters.) No wonder I couldn't remember having ever heard of this 'Chinese' movie. I had speculated that it was one of the small-budget Chinese productions aimed at winning awards in Europe. Had I checked out the director's name, I would have noticed its real origin.

Thus I had my first taste of modern South Korean film making. With a surreal plot and minimum sound effect, it is rather queer and somewhat pretentious. Certainly vastly different from the North Korean films I grew up watching, which were actually quite entertaining, with good story lines and very beautiful songs.

A Shameful Performance of The Economist

2007-02-06T03:10:00.000-08:00

In a Canadian Safeway (grocery store), the British weekly The Economist is given a very conspicuous place this week - one of the three magazines featured. It is both surprising and interesting, as that is exactly what I would like to see - I don't want to search for it as I would have to in Chapters, Canada's well known bookstore chain.

The current issue has an article entitled "China's space blast". It is incredibly poorly written. The author/writing team is shallow and conceited. Even the majority of American commentaries do better.

It is not a question of impartiality, but one of knowledge, knowledge of the nuances of disarmament negotiations, Chinese politics, and international geopolitics. It is a shameful demonstration of what happens when ignorance meets arrogance. I have no doubt that many China hands and experts of international military politics would be shaking their heads at it.

It is embarrassing for a reputable magazine.

If Only Franklin Roosevelth Knew!

2007-01-30T03:06:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. I looked into the mirror and was pleased to see a face younger than my age. Then I saw Dick Cheney 's face. The same face shown last week in Congress during George W. Bush's State of the Union speech. Today is his birthday, too.

Gosh! I cannot believe that I share a birthday with that guy! Can I see him being an Aquarius? Yes. I have studied his face with interest -- it shows mental agility and looks younger than his age when he isn't going through a heart surgery. But same birthday? Holy smokes!

The peculiar thing is both he and I are proud of being born on Franklin Roosevelth's birthday!!!

Nuts Are Good

2007-01-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

I love nuts. Salted nuts. Recently I have learned to buy them in the bulk section of the supermarkets.

Come to think of it, all the interesting people I know love eating nuts.

I believe that chewing nuts can effectively calm your nervous system, just like eating chocolate does. It is just that some folks use nuts and others use chocolate. To me, nuts are a better choice.

Actually we are all one kind of nuts or another.

George J. Stigler (1911-1991)

2007-01-17T00:37:00.000-08:00

George Stigler would have turned 96 today. He passed away shortly before his friend Ronald Coase's Nobel Ceremony. He himself won the same prize in 1982.

A long time faculty member of the economics department of University of Chicago and a close friend of Milton Friedman, who passed away last month, Stigler is easily associated with Friedman's liberal views and seen as part of the "Chicago Mafia".

One important but often neglected feature of the Chicago school economists is their emphasis on explanation of observed phenomena in the real world and empirical testing of theories. Friedman himself is one good example of such, especially before his shift of focus to developing a theory of currency in the 1960s. In this regard, both Stigler and Friedman were heavily influenced by an older colleague Aaron Director, Friedman's sister-in-law, who helped recruit Ronald Coase and whose real world knowledge and oral tradition (tie-in sales, price discrimination, etc.) was highly respected.

Today, many overzealous model builders out there would do themselves a favor to pay attention to these words of Stigler's:

"The criterion of congruence with reality should have been sharpened--sharpened into the insistence that theories be examined for their implications for observable behavior. Not only were such implications not sought and tested, but there was a tendency, when there appeared to be a threat of an empirical test, to reformulate the theory to make the test ineffective. Economists did not anxiously seek the challenge of the facts."

"Self Control"

2007-01-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

When this international hit song first appeared in 1984, I was still quite young and living in a communist country. I loved it instantly. Nothing was more helpful in getting the dust off my chest than shouting along this song!

But there was a problem - I need the lyrics badly in order to sing along. I could not easily figure it out though I had been studying English diligently. It was very frustrating. The song came to me only through the radio, via a foreign channel, the jamming of which had just been lifted in the wake of the country's new opening policy. Luckily, it was broadcast rather frequently and I was able to record it with a cassette recorder.

This recorder, however, was a newly acquired valuable of the family, purchased with a special currency issued to our visiting overseas relatives. I hit the "play", "stop", and "rewind" keys so frequently that my parents became very upset with me, convinced that I would ruin the machine in any second. In fact, it was soon taken away from me and placed on my father's big desk permanently (well, at least until I left the country). He sat there all the time, often reading Oscar Wilde, smoking a cigarette, and sipping Chinese rice wine all at once.

My problem was eventually solved in another way. I gave the tape to a newly arrived young professor from Great Britain. He wrote down the lyrics for me in no time.

_____________________________

Oh, the night is my world
City light painted girl
In the day nothing matters
It's the night time that flatters
In the night, no control
Through the wall something's breaking
Wearing white as you're walking
Down the street of my soul
You take my self
You take my self control
You got me livin' only for the night
Before the morning comes, the story's told
You take my self
you take my self control

Another night
Another day goes by
I never stop myself to wonder why
You help me to forget to play my role
You take my self
you take my self control

I - I live among the creatures of the night
I haven't got the will to try and fight
Against a new tomorrow
So I guess I'll just believe it
That tomorrow never comes

A safe flight
I'm living in the forest of my dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something
So I'll make myself believe it
That this night will never go....

Jimmy

2007-01-15T14:26:00.000-08:00

Jimmy re-surfaced in the cyberspace after disappearing for a few days. Sounds like everything is fine - without broken leg or hip on snow. He even talked about Beckham! If I had offended or embarrassed him with some akward questions, it is no longer an issue. If there was power outage in his area, it is over.

Jimmy is an accomplished retired economist who is highly respected in his field. He is also my tutor in American slangs. He is an excellent communicator, with wisdom and impeccable writing skills. He has also got style, humor, an open mind, and, most impressively, modesty.

He loves his dog Benny dearly and writes vividly about him. His scientific mind knows nothing about astrology. When I told him that he is a Virgo and a horse without him telling me his birthday, he was very surprised and asked how I ferreted that out.

CBC "Spy Story"

2007-01-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

Last evening, the CBC radio program "Ideas" featured a documentary on spies (Part II). No doubt it was triggered by the death of a former Soviet spy in London last month.

While I commended the effort, I was disappointed by its heavy reference to dialogues between characters in John La Carre's spy novels, which tend to overemphasize cynicism in western field agents. These novels no doubt carry a ring of truth of the world of espionage and their author is a very good writer. The know-it-all attitude and exaggerated cynicism radiated from those pages, however, is annoying.

Real world accounts of what happened is far more fascinating. And we learn from them that betrayals have more complex reasons. Surely the documentary could have been more interesting, had the author been an avid reader of the many memoirs of former spies of the Soviet Bloc and other publications that have benefited from the limited opening of KGB and other government archives, which have shed new light on events and people in the Cold War.

What is praise-worthy about this documentary is its inclusion of vocal comments of several heavy-weight players of the real world, who were veteran spy handlers and high ranking bureaucrats of spy agencies. Hearing their voices is a real treat. The former senior KGB official's command of English is impressive and listening to him is ten times better than trying to figure out Henry Kissinger's mumbling (on other occasions).

"In Search of Scotland"

2007-01-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Spent some time reading this old second-hand book that I dug out from a thrift shop yesterday. First published in London in 1929, it had a 12th edition within two years.

The author is a Englishman by the name of H. V. Morton. He also wrote "In Search of England" and "In Search of Ireland".

Although drawn to it initially by the author's clever use of the English Language, I do not have the patience to go through it. I hate the many remarks recorded in local dialects. I was curious, however, to find out how this intelligent man with a sharp wit described Edinburgh, a glorious city with unmatched beauty and a mix of history and modernity, which I had the luck to visit some years ago. I wasn't disappointed on this score.

It is a fine book over all.