Remember The Time?

Since sometime in late spring- around Memorial Day weekend and certain unspeakable events that happened twenty years ago around the first week of June- just about every Western blog has been blocked, leaving me unable to post anything without the help of a good proxy filter. Avoiding China's Great Firewall is not very difficult to do, but it's often a nuisance. I've been using Facebook and Twitter- two other blocked services- with much less frequency than the nearly hourly use to which I was accustomed. Like many other expats here, I was hoping this would all just blow over as the summer passed by notable anniversaries that could be exploited by overzealous internet users. Unfortunately, since then we've seen a steady stream of major blog-worthy events, of which several gave the monitors of the Great Firewall more cause to keep the current bans in place.

I fell ill and was treated at a Chinese hospital, giving me valuable insight into the current American health care clusterf*ck.

Michael Jackson died, which was a bummer but ultimately not world changing. His influence lasts, but them man was essentially irrelevant.

Chaos and violence in Xinjiang Province. The western province home to a substantial ethnic minority has been in a state of unrest due to ethnic and political tensions that spilled over into violence this July. Twitter got blocked again in the wake of this. I spoke to a guy from Xinjiang I know recently about this. He said that things out there are bad, but that his people are treated well in Shanghai. I found this curious, since many Chinese people I've spoken to stereotypically talk about Xinjiang people in racist stereotypes.

Friends and I formed a band and have our first concert scheduled for Novmember 4, the one year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama.

More ethnic tension across China as stabbings involving syringes and ethnic minorities occur.

I started working a second job as I learned the true face of working in China. Don't believe what you've read in the NYT or AP regarding working here. They're aloof.

Soon, we will have a major holiday: the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Things should get ridiculous.

The Yankees made it back to the playoffs.

Keep alive.

Do I Know You?

Chinese New Year is apparently so crazy that it took me just over two months to recover. Whoops?

Notes:

• I got promoted (kind of): I am now no longer an "academic specialist" but rather an "academic supervisor."
• My oldest friend- at least in my recollection- came to visit China while she was teaching in Thailand. During her stopover in Shanghai, I built upon the lessons of my last guest and tried doing almost no touristy stuff at all. Instead, we tried out random restaurants I had always wanted to try, walked around, and went to the brand new Barbie store. The Barbie store was kind of like a girly Niketown, maybe. It's six floors, slathered in pink, and has an overpriced bar up on the top floor. That being said, it's actually really well decorated.
• More rock concerts, including the group Battles all the way from NY and Hedgehog from Beijing. Battles was outrageous, while Hedgehog was spoiled by the crowd of obnoxious Chinese hipsters apparently unfamiliar with deodorant and toothpaste, not to mention standard rock concert protocol.
• Wow, Bush administration, you just make it easier and easier to paint you as awful villains, don't you? Really? You waterboarded the same two dudes over two-hundred fifty times? I don't imagine I'd take too kindly to being tortured, but I suspect somewhere around the fortieth time, I'd start to be a little nonplussed by the whole affair.
• Baseball season is here! Go Yankees! The managers of my company are all from Taiwan, where baseball is much more popular than it is here on the mainland where you're lucky if people even know what baseball is. One of the managers, being from Taiwan, is a big fan of Wang Chien-ming and the Yankees. I don't think I'd ever spoken to him in the nearly one year of time I've been around him (between my intership and my current tenure) until he approached me after Wang bombed again in his second start to say "Wang Chien-ming..." while shaking his head. I took the chance today to approach him and do the same today, following Wang's third blowout.
• The weather's getting nicer, so I'm taking more opportunities to wander around as a pedestrian instead of as a passenger. It makes the city a lot more interesting, and it's amazing how much closer everything is than you might think。
• I'll officially be returning to the States, although only for two weeks, in June. So, start making preparations now.

And, just like that, we're back in business.

Economics is the Dismal Science; Politics is Where it Gets Stimulating

Something I don't care for: frivolous government spending. Something I care for even less than that: politicians who act like it's a harbinger of the the apocalypse. Yes, folks, this is about the stimulus. And I'm not going to talk about the economics of it, really. It's borderline hackneyed to point out that tax cuts aren't particularly effective (and certainly not in this climate) or that the package probably isn't big enough. I'm fascinated by the political debate.

I just came across an awesome map of America over at msnbc.com. ("Interactive Timeline...") Take a look- I promise you'll feel blindsided, too. I usually read two newspapers a day, not to mention pickings from an assortment of other periodicals and blogs, and so it's not like I didn't know that unemployment was very high. But seeing it there colorcoded really hit me in the gut. Did you notice that the states with the senators complaining the loudest about proposed solutions seemed to have the lowest unemployment? (I'm looking at you, Nebraska) No wonder they seem so oblivious the urgency of this problem.

If people are complaining that Democrats are going falling back into their old ways instead of adopting a transformational approach in line with the style of the Obama movement, the same can be said for the cut and paste response from Republicans. Did you see the new RNC head on Fox saying that "government has never created a single job"? Never? How about my father's job? How about my great-grandfather's work a WPA mason during the Great Depression? The religious devotion to tax cuts among these people is truly ridiculous. Don't they realize they lost on that platform?

Sure, the stimulus bill probably does spend some money in the wrong places. But can we really say definitively what will and what won't help the economy? We call economics a science, but the practical application of it is nothing close. Moreover, most of this so-called wasteful spending doesn't seem very wasteful to me. In today's WaPo, columnist Steve Pearlstein notes:

[WSJ Columnist Daniel] Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient. ("Wanted...")

I think he's right on target. Even if the spending itself doesn't save America (and I can assure you, it won't), what it will do is rebuild the fabric of our society. The New Deal didn't save us from the Depression, but it did give us modern American society- everything from bridges to libraries to parks to schools and beyond. It gave us the paradigm through which everything else has developed, and yes, that involves quite a few civil servants. So what?

If Republicans want something to worry about, I've got a suggestion. Did you know that construction is the least efficient industry in America? Okay, that one isn't surprising, either. Once again, though, the numbers behind it are pretty astonishing:

Every other industry has gotten more productive in the past half century – by about 22 percent on average. Construction has seen productivity fall by 25 percent. ("Trillion Dollar Barry...")

If we're really going to be spending so much money on infrastructure, then pols worried about spending should focus on making sure these projects finish on budget and finish on time. I guess they'd still be tilting at windmills, but since the election proved tax cuts are out of fashion, at least they'd be trying out something new.

Dodgeball

Time to rub how great my job is in all of your faces again.

Yesterday, I got to teach a class on dodgeball. The timing of the event couldn't have been better, either, thanks to that Iraqi guy. President Bush's surprisingly good ducking skills were very helpful in illustrating proper technique:

White Goodman: "Hmm. Oh, I don't think I'm a lot dumber than you thought that I think that I thought I was once."

It was pretty weird how nonchalantly everyone's been taking this. Most of us in the office reacted to the video with a shrug, as though we were all thinking "I wouldn't mind doing that, myself." But I was more surprised that my students, having grown up in an authoritarian society, didn't really find it surprising to see objects being hurled at our President. I expected them to treat the situation with some severity- what if shoes had been thrown at Wen Jiabao or Hu Jintao?- but maybe Bush really is just that poorly regarded.

Anyway, the actual dodgeball was activity was great. If you're curious, I proved to everyone that sidearm totally dominates.

Timeline: Nov. 5, 2008

Because I live in Shanghai, I live half a day ahead of the action back at home in the States. Here's the recap of how Election Morning went.

6:45 AM: Alarm goes off. I'm ready to kill my supervisor, Jaret, with whom I'll be heading over to Malone's to watch it all unfold.

8:00 AM: The election party is well underway. Polls start closing as breakfast gets served. I pickup a cool Obama poster that will soon be the first bit of wall decor for my apartment.

9:00 AM: Second round of polls. Obama takes the lead from McCain. The entire bar is pro-Obama and, even this early in the morning, the place goes wild. We're all also totally confused by a) CNN's insistence on using hologram technology, and b) Wolf Blitzer's continual insistence that "these are real votes we're looking at."

9:30 AM: Sonja arrives, soon to be followed by Clemon. The bar is filling up, still rocking for Obama.

10:00 AM: Next round of polls, and Obama's lead becomes commanding. It feels like a Saturday night at Malone's. Soon after, John King more or less proclaims the night over and the place goes ballistic.

11:00 AM: Round four. As this hour goes on, we start really doing the math. It's now just a countdown to noon, when the West Coast will make it all official. We've got two more compatriats that have joined us at our corner of the bar.

12:00 PM: Explosion of jubilation and relief. It's all finally over: eight years of confusion and two years of diligent attention to current events, done in an instant. CNN gets turned down and the PA turns towards Stevie Wonder. It's now actually a party. The gang's now buying rounds of Budweiser to celebrate. I notice everyone in the bar is breathing very, very deeply.

12:30 PM: McCain concession speech is very gracious and the whole bar kind of develops a soft spot for old guy.

1:30 PM: Obama addresses 240,000 people hanging out in a park, not to mention we millions around the world. Malone's totally freaks when he address "those watching from beyond our shores."

2:00 PM: Jaret and I get back to the office, still in total disbelief. Every breath I take sounds like a sigh.

5:00 PM: Work moving very slowly. It's all still surreal.

7:30 PM: Teaching goes really well, but it's clear that I'm totally out of it.

9:30 PM: I'm on the subway, headed towards the Bund to meet up with my high school girlfriend. She's in Shanghai on a trip.

10:15 PM: We're at Glamour Bar for the official Obama victory party. Lots of foreigners, and they're all ecstatic. They're serving "Obama-tinis" and "Change We Can Believe Ins".

Nov. 6, 2008

10:00 AM: Wait, did yesterday really happen? This distance is really making it not feel real.

This has been such an incredible past few days. It's amazing how much support Obama has here among the expat community. I've met exactly one person that supported McCain, but we're pretty sure he's in the CIA, anyway.

I've spoken about my incredible love of country before, but, as of Wednesday morning, I've never loved it more. Feeling the excitement of a whole community rallying behind Obama was really special.

Baseball and Healthcare

Today, the New York Times printed a brilliant op-ed piece, co-written by former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, Democratic Senator from the state of Massachusetts, John Kerry, and General Manager of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane.

IN the past decade, baseball has experienced a data-driven information revolution. Numbers-crunchers now routinely use statistics to put better teams on the field for less money. Our overpriced, underperforming health care system needs a similar revolution. ("How to take American Health Care from Worst to First")

Americans always pull this BS attitude about how great our healthcare system is, even though it's clearly broken. "Try going to Canada and waiting," they always say. Frankly, I'd rather wait a little bit for a procedure than go into crippling debt in order to pay for it. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, this piece is about how medical systems could apply sabermetrics in order to dramatically reduce costs and improve efficiency, which explains why Beane is a co-writer in the article. Gingrich and Kerry provide some serious bipartisan gravitas, as two incredibly bright people that come from opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Powell and Palin

One of the nice things about being in a big city like Shanghai is that I still have more or less unobstructed access to American news, so that I can follow politics. As I was writing some emails an taking care of a few errands, Colin Powell made the right choice in finally backing Obama. That's been speculated for how many months now?

Not to be outdone, I across the following "best website ever", and am happy to share it with everyone:

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Please, explore it and have fun. It's riotously funny.

Courting the Feminazis: Gov. Sarah Palin

"Governor Palin ... will remind women that if they are not welcome on the Democrat's ticket, they have a place with Republicans," - Gov. Mike Huckabee

John McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate today. I've made it pretty clear that I'm an Obama supporter over the past few months, and his VP choice wasn't going to change my mind, but I can't help feel I've been cheated. Maybe it's just how transparent this whole scheme is that's really bothering me. It seems so clear that this has nothing to do with anything but trying to steal votes by luring women to John McCain.

It must have been Limbaugh that really tipped me off to the absurdity of this all. As I was running some errands today, I had Rush on the radio, as is my wont. (Yes, I'm liberal, but the man is good listening.) Right at noon, with no qualifying statements, Rush jumped right on to the Palin bandwagon. This is the man that popularized the term "feminazi", praising a decision made for the sole purpose of attracting feminists to the ticket. I know that Rush has to play along, because he has to push for his guy to win, but that kind of turn around is upsetting. Maybe it's fitting, though. I personally think that choosing Gov. Palin is an anti-feminist choice.

First, let's go into why Palin is an absurd pick for VP. McCain makes such a fuss about experience, so it's asinine that he's picked someone with so little of it as his running mate. She was the mayor of a small Alaskan city for a few years before ascending briefly to the governorship of a state which is barely important: the only reason it's even a state is oil. And that's another thing: for a candidate that talks about energy independence and getting off fossil fuels, picking a candidate with such strong oil credentials is offensive. But more than any of this, John McCain is old and has a history of cancer; if there was any candidate in recent memory that needed a VP ready to take over at any time, McCain is the guy. I don't see that ability in Sarah Palin.

So why is Palin an anti-feminist choice? Because this decision makes clear a lack of respect for women. Sure, she fits into the "reformer" image McCain's trying to push. And, of course, Palin deserves respect for being a high profile working mother and for her achievements. She does not, however, deserve to be used. The quote from Gov. Huckabee above is essentially a neon sign boasting about the pandering to women embodied by this choice. Much of Palin's speech was devoted to drawing to link between the women who flocked to Hillary Clinton and the significance of this choice. Republicans are so obviously aiming to exploit a voting block already thrown into chaos by the Clinton campaign. (Plus, they're exploiting the misconceptions that Clinton would have liked to be VP or that she had the nomination "stolen" from her.) Additionally, if Palin is to be a feminist icon, she is a curious one. By my own calculations, she was no older than 19 when she had her first child. She is anti-choice and an avid huntress.

If John McCain and the Republicans think this is "change," there may be no better indicator of just how superficial their idea of change really is. Gov. Palin is a worthy woman, but she's been unfairly reduced to a cheap gimmick.

Update: Either I'm losing it, or the boundless wisdom of Wikipedia lead me astray. As it happens, Sarah Palin's oldest son did not turn 18 in 2001 but in instead in 2007, meaning that she did not have her first kid at 19. But apparently, she will be a grandmother at the ripe old age of 44 or so.