Happy Halloween!

Where, oh where, is my Journal today?

Oh where, oh where will it be?
Is it under a bush?
Is it out on the lawn?
Or, (yes), even caught up in the tree?
Each morning I play hide and seek
Because, as you can see,
On the porch, or even near the porch,
The Journal will just never be.
A call to the Journal got this response:
Well … you see [...]

Are You Ashamed of Your Country’s Idiots?

A few years ago I was visiting some of my former students from Sichuan who were then working in a factory in Guangdong.
At the time there had been a story in the news that a couple Americans had been arrested for stealing some artifacts from an Egyptian pyramid.
One of my former students asked me whether [...]

Thinking of a Name

I’m currently trying to think of a name for a user account in Second Life. When I had only ever lived in the US I probably would have picked some cool foreign sounding name without pause for thought; probably name myself after some ancient Greek astronomer. However, after living in China for four years, I [...]

Pyongyang and Beijing’s Second Ring Road

Pyongyang pretty much fits inside Beijing’s Second Ring Road. Such a small place causing such big problems.

Click to enlarge.
Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, as seen from Google Earth with an outline of Beijing’s Second Ring Road in light blue.