If you've ever fixed any kind of machinery, you know that a device that's exposed to the elements is incredibly difficult to maintain. A washing machine or the underside of a car gets grungy, fast. On the other hand, the... […]
It's a mindset, not just a job. You can pitch them as hard as you like about having them work to persuade their patients to give up smoking (after all, it saves lives in the long run), but I think... […]
I love watching contrails, those streams of white frozen exhaust that jets leave behind. It's a temporary track in the sand, and then the sun melts them and they're gone. Go to Montana and you might see the tracks dinosaurs... […]
If you build your business around being the lowest-cost provider, that's all you've got. Everything you do has to be a race in that direction, because if you veer toward anything else (service, workforce, impact, design, etc.) then a competitor... […]
The diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, to be celebrated this weekend, is the occasion for unprecedented display of royal treasures from Buckingham Palace. […]
Queen Elizabeth’s jewels will be displayed this summer as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations — and the monarch has been loaning them to new members of the royal family too. […]
Confucius is back again and, at 10 meters tall, is bigger than ever. Why the continued preoccupation with the ancient Sage (551 B.C.E.-479 B.C.E.) in today’s China is still unclear (see here and here). Only time will tell whether the current interest in him has real staying power. In this particular incarnation, Confucius is a […]
Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to China, but Beijing’s crackdown on media coverage and Internet activity related to OWS isn’t surprising. What’s less predictable are ways that Occupy protests could shake up China’s internal politics, especially among neo-Maoists. Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to the People’s Repub […]
The Setting: Tiananmen Square The Time: January 2011-June 2011 The Players: Mao Zedong, Confucius, Louis Vuitton Sounds almost like a Tom Stoppard play. But, no, Mao, Confucius, and Louis Vuitton have been mixing it up lately on China’s most renowned stage. For decades now, Mao’s portrait has hung over the Tiananmen Gate at the far […]
There are times when the remarks of a long-dead sage can seem especially relevant. More than 2500 years ago Confucius gathered around him a group of dedicated disciples who listened fervently to his teachings and then passed them on to later generations in an edited volume known as the Lunyu, conventionally translated in English as […]
The preliminary 2010 China census figures are in—and they are eye-opening. Some numbers (Science): 1. Total population in 2010: 1.34 billion Total population in 2000: 1.27 billion 2. Percentage of population 14 years-old and younger in 2010: 16.6% Percentage of population 14 years-old and younger in 2000: 22.9% 3. Percentage of population 60 […]