Years of Poems and Spirits

Just finished reading a short novel by Marisa Silver on the NYkr. Liked her style very much. Reminded me of a little bit of Camus: seeking meaning from banality of life. Feeling out death by observing the impact it has on people and people around the dying. Hopefully I will come across work in the future.

Had a busy first half of June. Trying to keep up with John M’s work. Started with Marketfish last week. A lot uncertainty for sure: the startup’s future, my own performance as the data guy. But there is anything that still excites, it is knowledge discovery. So I am looking forward to the challenge.

Notes from the usual water hole:

NYKr 2009.5.4 issue, “Money Talks”: A glowing profile of Peter Orszag.

Overall impression: a wunderkind, a master of budgetary details with a keen sense of politics and a eye for public communications. The author seems to be framing the Obama administration in much the same way as the term “The Best and the Brightest” did to the Kennedy administration.

Some highlights:

• Orszag tried hard to refine his message after being grilled by Jon Stewart. Another example, when called upon to explain the difference in budget proposal from the Congress, said if not twins, “they are brothers that look an awful lot a like”
• Harry Reid called him not a resident bureaucrat but a political “natural”
• A product of New England elite who interned for Tom Daschle while he was on the bench in Senate

Key: “Orszag has turned the OMB into something of a behavioral economics think tank“  Is B.E. to Obama what the Supply-side was to Reagan, or the Keynesian Roosevelt?

Why the Obama era is so different from the Clinton era:

• New assumption: deficit and GDP – the government can live with deficit indefinitely (a depart from the core Clinton legacy) Healthcare reform is deficit reduction.
• Rahm Emanuel vs. Being B.T.U.-ed: how the W.H. screwed up Congressional allies with a half-baked legislative push
• Advisers: Orszag vs. Stiglitz – Norway resumed commercial whaling but negotiated the 93 Middle-East accord. Stiglitz proposed alternative to trade sanction: to boycott Winter Olympic. W. Christopher: “Joe, do you realize that you are equating the killing of four ninke whales with the invasion of Afghanistan?” “You know, you are right. How about we just boycott those events we won’t win?” (the story that made my day)

Follow up on the 1989.6.4 thought:

This blurb garnered a surprisingly many accolades (three), so I thought it is worth noting:

I come to believe 1989 as a tragedy made up of a collection of mistakes.  It should serve as a collective lesson for the Chinese nation. Undoubtedly, the suppression of memories (of the massacre)  deprived my people of a historical opportunity to look into ourselves  and to move beyond past mistakes. However, I think some of us are  missing the obvious here: the key lessons from 1989 have been learned.

… (the usual challenge to the false promise of nationalistic revolution)

If one looks at 1989 in this historical context, it became less destructive in the long run. In a way, together with the Cultural Revolution, 1989 successfully eliminated any remaining fantasy on revolution in Chinese political thought. It forcefully transformed an intensively political nation to one that is more focused on economic development. Even the new political life, dare I say, is in general less violence-prone than the old one: the ruling are more sensitive to the dissatisfaction from below. The ruled are forced into other, more peaceful ways to alter the political course.

Just Being Flippant:
NYT calls the 邓玉娇 case a “Civic-Minded Chinese Find a Voice Online” Apparently, the writer doesn’t know anything about China, nor does he know the basics of civic society. A true civic society is based on trust, on solid foundation of widespread civic association (social capital). What happens in China nowadays is akin to moral vigilantism.  In other words, what happened to 邓玉娇 and what happened to 王千源 is just two sides of the same coin. We Chinese are “Judgmental Bastards” (thanks, Jay Leno).

The State of Chinese Elite:

Didn’t know there is someone actually studying the Chinese intellectual elite (Merle Goldman).  Really like to read her work and ask her assessment/characterization of contemporary Chinese “elite”.

Two stories really pissed me off:

1. The 方静事件. Lisa C has an excellent writeup on her blog. A news anchorwoman was suddenly accused of espionage by a journalism professor. And one of her guest on the show, an admiral in the navy no less, joined the rumor war from his blog.
2. Another terrible translation incident:
   

   “费尔班德”、“林T·C”、“赫萨”，这串洋味十足的名字，其实对应的都是学术圈名 人：费正清、林同济、夏济安。… 最近，一篇署名“高山杉”的文章在网上引起热议，它把中央 编译出版社于2008年10月出版的清华大学历史系副主任王奇所著《中俄国界东段学术史研究：中国、俄国、西方学者视野中的中俄国界东段问题》一书中几十 处名字谬误公之于众。其中最荒唐不过的，当属蒋介石(Chiang Kai-shek)被改名为“常凯申”。

更有甚者，孟子被译成“门修斯”

Here is what I wrote Lisa C:

I am totally astounded by the free-wheeling-ness of some of the elites. They are considered as elites because they are supposed to be experts in what they do. And yet they would go so far off what they are paid to do and to chase a 15min fame. There is a profound lack of professionalism, don’t you think? Here whether it is Drudge or Page Six, they do tabloid but they do their job really well. How many times you see an American army general engage in this type of speculation? That is totally absurd.

More – what do those stories tell us? Some hypothesis:

1. People venture out their profession because they don’t feel fulfilled at their job. In other words, the journalism professor and the naval admiral don’t feel like they are being compensated for what they can fetch in an open market
2. Can a State’s capacity being measured by the competency of its elites? Is there an index can track that? Or is it even trackable? If it ever is, my hunch is that the two are pretty strongly correlated.

Watching Iran

Looks like a train wreck. So many commentators have mentioned June 4th in the same breath. It will really hurt to see another June 4th happen again.

So much conflicting information … as I am writing, my mind drifted back to the days when we were on horseback in Brazil … wished life could have less conflict, violence, more appreciation and above all stand still.

What I don’t like:

• A movement that is made up of relatively homogeneous demographics: urban, secular, students, Tehran only. Similar pattern also found in Beijing 1989, Venezuela, Bolivia and Thailand

What I like:

• Obama’s handling of the situation. Someone said the politicians like to grandstand in moments like this. True professionals know better and wait. No question Obama has resisted as far as he can
• I am reasonably convinced that the election is rigged. The outrage on the street is genuine (not something made up by the lefties here)

About This Blog:

After a lengthy discussion with the Boston couple, I suddenly realized that this blog is my alter ego.  No wonder all this mess …

Read an article (”Roughing It”) on an old New Yorker (Apr. 20, 2009, I am terribly falling behind). I found it very moving. The story tells of an adventure of two young girls from upper New York state coming to teach in a mountain village school in Colorado.

The story was an easy read, quite humorous, with a quick and cheerful tempo. Even the hardship the two young girls endured was used to prop up their frontier spirit and adventurous soul.

The story seems to be full of misfits: two Smith-educated New England girls coming to a homestead community, teaching boisterous kids from cowboy and miner families on subjects from Latin to “Domestic Science” (e.g. cooking). They came all the way across the country to seek natural beauty, a sense of adventure and fulfillment. But the community, led by a couple of enterprising New England transplants, is also expecting eligible brides for local “boys”.

Despite the plots and the mis-matches, the girls and the community grew close over time. Almost a hundred years later, when the author–the granddaughter of one of the two–traced back their lives and those of their students, she found that the two girls left their marks on many people in the community. In the process, their experience in a remote Rockies mountains also reshaped their own lives.

This is a very heartwarming story and, even better, is true. I have seen movies and read books on the Western life before. They all left me with a combined feeling of admiration but scare. I was never able to relate to that stylized life. The reason I found this story moving is because it says, “Life was harsh. Not everyone went there found gold or became rich. However, even in a failed story like this, you see the beauty in man’s nature and will.”

I liked the story so much that I am translating it into Chinese. For now I am posting it here. Once I completed it, I will post it in other places.