103 meanings of qi

Out of a combination of pretension and nerdiness, I generally get pretty anal when I use foreign words in my writing. Greek words are put in Greek font. In working on my Theragāthā paper I became really anal about accents for Sanskrit words. I couldn't just write "nirvana" I had to write "nirvāņa."

So now I'm writing a little about Chinese nature attitudes, so I have to (have to!) use the little accents to marks to indicate tone, even though most people use the Pinyin system without the marks. Since I have to (have to!) use the accent marks, but don't actually know any Chinese, I've been looking everything up on Mandarin Tools. I learn a lot of interesting things this way, although most of it is not relevant to anything. For instance, I wanted to know which tone you use on the word "qi" when you want to refer to the cosmic energy. Well it turns out that Mandarin Tools lists 103 meanings for the word qi, including: foot with six toes, water chestnut, to marry off (a daughter), hill without trees, bow to the ground, odd, weird, and wonderful. Separate characters were listed for "seven" and "seven (fraud-proof)." One meaning of qi (using the rising tone, qí) is tholepin. Another character pronounced qì can mean to whisper, to blame, or to slander, which I think is a splendid combination of meanings.

I still can't figure out which qi is cosmic energy, though. [update: use the fourth tone to mean cosmic energy.]

On a related note, here is a 93 word poem in Mandarin where every word is rendered as "shi" in unaccented pinyin. The words themselves differ only in tone, which makes the accompanying sound file interesting to listen to.

The fine art of voice looping

Reggie Watts: Out Of Control on Vimeo via apo@unfogged

Chinese National Geographic

Three Gorges Probe has a translation of part of an article from a 2004 Chinese National Geographic on the state of dam safety in China. It has good statistics and examples for people who are following the issue closely. More interesting for me: The existence of a Chinese National Geographic magazine. (It is here for those who can read it.) The existence of National Geographic is a nice indicator of growing popular environmental consciousness. Apparently, NG has been offering an expanding line of non-English language editions since 1995. The environmental consciousness represented by NG might not live up to the pure, noncommercial standards of Edward Abbey fans, but it is exactly the kind of popular environmental awareness that makes environmentalism possible as a social movement.

Noesis

Noesis, the limited area search engine for academic philosophy, is back on line, now in partnership with Google.

Update: Episteme links also has some customized philosophy search engines.

Alberto Gonzales Explains it all for you.

It's so simple, I don't see how any of us could have missed it! The constitution doesn't grant habeas corpus after all. See, article 1 section 9 says: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." But wait, it doesn't say that we *have* the right to habeas; it just says that *if* we had that right, the government couldn't take it away. Here, let Gonzales explain: “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended...”

via TNR via unfogged

Brain injury helps you quit smoking

shortly after I inquire on unfogged about cognitive science and akrasia, I see this NYT article.

Chinese EPA takes action against polluters; Three Gorges Probe has translated interview

According to the Three Gorges Probe

In an unprecedented move, SEPA slapped "regional permit restrictions" on four cities (Tangshan, Luliang, Laiwu and Liupanshui) and four major power companies (Datang International, Huaneng, Huadian and Guodian), suspending approval of any new projects until they bring their existing facilities into compliance with environmental regulations.

I still don't have enough of a sense of Chinese environmental politics to know how big a deal this is, but TGP is generally critical of Party environmental policy.

As a part of this story, TGP translate an interview with Pan Yue, originally conducted in Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo). Pan comes off as an environmental good guy. In the interview, he places some blame for pollution on regional officials who stand to gain more by promoting economic growth than protecting the air

TGP: What is the crux of the problem? You've criticized local officials who are intent on launching new projects as having a distorted view of what constitutes achievement in political life. The central government does not approve of these projects and, for example, has punished the company and local officials who were behind the Xinfeng Power Plant in Inner Mongolia.

Pan Yue: I have repeatedly stressed that the environment deteriorates because of officials' skewed concept of political accomplishment. But now, powerful interest groups and officials' distorted view of what constitutes political achievement have joined forces, to the environment's detriment....This [the behavior of the interest groups] has not only undermined the central government's macroeconomic policies but has also gone against the interests of ordinary people, and led to social unrest.

Pan asks for help, though, in his fight against the people he sees as behind the rising pollution. (Perhaps the whole goal of the interview is to push this agenda)

At the moment, the reality is that the current environmental laws look good on paper, but that's by and large where they remain because our power to punish offenders is pretty limited. In terms of the administrative measures in our arsenal, we don't have the power to close down offending companies or to remove the local government officials who should be held accountable, or even to perform our management functions of environmental monitoring and enforcement of environmental protection laws in a top-down manner.

Hey SLU Folk! Check this out!

John Collins is running an excellent series of discussions on the use of language in the War on Whatever Bush Decides to Label Terrorism. The stuff below is adapted from his flier. The full information, including a complete schedule can be found here.

Keywords: Explorations in the Politics of Language and the Language of Politics

Organized by the members of Save Our Constitution
Tuesdays 7:00-8:30 in Dean-Eaton Lounge (with refreshments!)

Keywords is a series of campus conversations designed to stimulate awareness and critical analysis of the language through which contemporary politics is framed. The series will pay particular attention to language associated with the ongoing “war on terrorism.” Each session will focus on one or two words or phrases. Drawing on their own research and class discussions, student and faculty facilitators will make brief presentations, prepare concrete examples of how the language has been and is being used, and lead a discussion based on key questions.

Some highlights from the schedule

• February 20: Patriotism (Rob Loftis and “Ethical Theory” students)
• February 27: Peace (Laura O’Shaughnessy and “Introduction to Peace Studies” students)
• April 17: Security/Homeland Security (John Collins and “Terror Alert!” FYS students)
• May 1: Jihad (Michael Kemper and “Jihad Movements” class students)

Be there or be square.

Andy Griffith v. The Patriot Act

Via joeo at unfogged

Elephant fetus

Here. Cutest. fetus. ever.

Fun tool applied to Chinese Environment

B-wo at unfogged a fun tool. Amaznode allows you to search the amazon database by keyword and then gives you a network of books linked together by the measure "users who bought this book also bought." Searching for China and Environmentquickly brings up three books we have been working with a lot in preparing our course: Judith Shapiro, Mao's War Against Nature; Vaclav Smil, China's Past, China's Future; and Elizabeth Economy, The River Runs Black. As the cart evolves though, these books turn out to be bridges between three clusters: one on energy and business issues focussed on China Shifts Gears; one one cultural history, focussed on China Marches West: the Qing Conquest of Central Asia; and one on ancient military history, focussed on Ancient China and its Enemies.

Floating free of these clusters are a cluster about Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan, which I just got out of the library an hour ago, and a cluster about Tigers, Rice, Silk and Silt. The latter cluster includes a lot of Foucault and Gramsci, along with Said's Orientalism, so it may contain just the book I've been looking for that does Orientalism in a specifically Chinese context. [Update: No luck, Said and Orientalism aren't in the index. It does look like a good environmental history, though. This also looks nice.]

[Interesting self reflective note: I didn't feel I understood the chart I had generated until I wrote the little narrative above about it.]

Later: Gapminder as applied to China.

The map of China that I want

I am looking for an online resource for maps of china that includes all and only the points of interest for my course. Picky, I know. Some notes so far.

I am finding Google Earth difficult to deal with. Now that I have upgraded to 4.0, unchecking boxes in the "layers" menu actually makes extraneous information go away, which is a serious improvement. However, checking boxes in the "layers" menu does not make useful information appear. No matter how many boxes you check under "borders", including "first level admin names (states/provinces)" you cannot see province names. Also, for what we are doing, a map with bright blue lines for the major rivers would be nice, but checking "water bodies" does no good.

This tourist site at least has interesting maps that show the extent of the different major Chinese empires.

Lots of fun maps at the Wikimedia Atlas of China, including also maps of the various empires. In a couple cases has conflicting maps for the same period, is missing other periods. Also, each map has a different frame. It would be nice for all the maps to have the same frame so you can click through them in sequence.

Ok, I've spent too much time on this. To the library to get books on Chinese environmental movements.

World's Dirtiest City

Check out this CNN story on Linfen China. (Scroll down to sci-tech.) Oddly, the story doesn't mention what standard they used to judge Linfen the world's dirtiest city. (The reporter's say so?)

Suddenly, I want to take my students there.

A NSF funded program to take American students to China

Preparing Resource and Environmental Managers with International Understandings and Merits (PREMIUM). Not so much impressed with the acronym.