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I've been wondering why it seems that the mainland Chinese hold no respect
for authenticity. I think there's a general human expectation that when you do something,
you do it right. This concept has little value in China today, but why?
A few quick examples, just to make it clear what I'm talking about:
- add melamine and water to milk -- it's cheaper and tests as protein !!
- have a cute little girl lipsync a song at the olympic opening ceremony -- the actual singer isn't cute enough !!
- soak fresh celery in sewage -- it gets heavier and you can sell it for more !!
- melamine is great, use it in pet food too !!
- sell dried bunny ears instead of fish maw -- I guess they look similar enough to fool consumers
- serve 40-proof shots at the club -- tastes more like soju than Cuervo
- feeding time at the aquarium? -- stick heads of romaine into the concrete "coral" so it looks like seaweed
- fake Apple stores selling fake Apple products -- even after getting busted, some of the employees claimed they thought they worked for Apple
- I'll probably never be granted another Chinese visa after this list
So why is it that these stories are so much more common in mainland China than
elsewhere in the world? I think it is because the government sets such a bad example.
In America, we have a government whose strongest value is freedom (forget for a
moment that it was founded on slavery). In China, the Communist government's
strongest value is supposedly equality and sharing. But the only thing that really
matters is maintaining authoritarian control of the population. The people can see that
the government talks one way and walks another way, and hypocrisy has replaced authenticity.
The 14th Dalai Lama yesterday issued a statement on reincarnation, in which he also pointed out the
ideological hypocrisy of the Communist government.
They "as communists reject religion, but still involve themselves
in religious affairs," with schemes to make their own identifications of reincarnated Tibetan
spiritual leaders. These schemes are disrupting Tibetan culture, religion, society, and
individual lives to the point
that the Dalai Lama has said he will think about it, and may declare that there not be a
15th Dalai Lama at all. Anyways, great statement, although a lot of it may not make sense
to those unfamiliar with Tibetan Buddhism.
Photos: NASA
NASA's budget, including all funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, is at risk.
I feel a little weird posting about this, because it has to do with the federal budget, which I don't really understand. I think at this point the House has passed something based on its Appropriation Committee's recommendation to axe JWST and drastically cut NASA's budget (which has already been lagging inflation). The budget still has to go to the Senate.
In the big picture, JWST is only one of the numerous casualties of the Tea Party's stupidity. Canceling JWST and slashing NASA's budget affect me more directly than other programs, so that's why I'm trying to speak out about it. But the big picture is so grim, it's hard not to just completely give up.
Here are some things that may help, at least with JWST:
Friends: Now includes both my parents and a lot of cousins.
Like: I added like buttons to Laura's website. Here is an example. I had to keep visiting the facebook
developer site to do this, because the linter was broken for the longest time, and I
found the following quote in the developer forum to be entertaining. Mainly because I feel like the "one day" is very close:
I'm getting the same error!
One day we will look back on this and laugh... remember the last time you logged into facebook? Me neither! Hahahaha! Remeber MySpace? No. Hahahaha!
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