君子不器
Was re-reading this post at Danwei about how the “yellow fever” myth–not the illness but you know, white guys with “a thing for Asian women” — was finally debunked in one Columbia University study: We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that…
I’ve recently gotten back into Taiwan’s history of shipwrecks, savages, and pirates, perhaps because I’ve lately also been reading a lot of Conan novellas. The most famous shipwreck involved the Rover, an American merchant vessel that ran aground near Eluanbi (southern tip of island) in 1867. The ship didn’t quite sink after hitting a coral reef…
A long FB post about the evils of borders by my old mentor, Doc M., bothered me. If you simplify things to the point where you’re saying “oh, borders are plain bad because they separate people who are all basically the same” you win points as a kind-hearted humanitarian, but you don’t win the debate.…
Managed to pass that stupido test (after 5 tries) and demonstrate that I am an ethical academic. Dare you doubt me? Proof: I’d like to have it framed, but I think I’ll just leave it here as a reminder of how a day of my life was stolen from me. The thing says it’s “proof…
{*MOST unwelcome news, pt 1*} Frustrationwise and in terms of raw busy, this has been the worst weekend of my entire semester. Application deadline for MOST (Ministry of Sci & Tech) grants is once again near, so had to finish that up and try for my Ethical Researcher Scout badge from them. This involves reading…
“In the early ’60s a Yoyodyne executive living near LA and located somewhere in the corporate root-system above supervisor but below vice-president, having found himself, at age 39, automated out of a job. Having been since age 7 rigidly instructed in an eschatology that pointed nowhere but to a presidency and death, trained to do…
09-20-2018 Today’s interviews to hire 2 ‘Full-time Lecturers’ for the Language Center went smoothely. I’d say the candidates all did a good job of demo-teaching some scenarios I came up with beforehand, but since this was a College-level jiaoping hui I wasn’t actually on the committee, just invited in a non-voting capacity. The other members,…