| This should redeem their mediocre season up until yesterday. Maryland beat #1 ranked UNC at their home court! Go Terps! 
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| still here... even though i've been off this for a long time now. still enjoying the food. korean, japanese, chinese, thai, indian, desserts, korean fried chicken, pizza... just a sample of what we've eaten in the last 2 weeks. and all cheap too. the chicken in particular is awesome. Unidentified Flying Chicken. Namesake b/c it comes to you in a plain brown paper bag. We waited 45 minutes for this stuff. for chicken!!! sounds apocalyptic i know. but it was worth it. hard to explain it but it is. you have to have it to believe it. whoever wants to come and visit us (this deal is only between now and feb 29 only, hahaha), we'll buy you some chicken. and let you stay with us. will definitely miss it if / when we move... unless of course we go to LA or SF. =) highly unlikely, but you never know, right? |
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| You know it's fast in New York City when a pregnant woman who looks like she's 8 months is walking faster than you down Park Avenue.... |
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| Two articles on China stuck out to me today as I thought about philanthropy in China. The first was a well-written piece (courtesy of the Wall Street Journal) on why China has so much fake goods in the marketplace. In China, apparently, it is no longer news. Here's an excerpt:
"Xiaobo Lu, a political science professor at Columbia University, says that once the institutions are in place, the Chinese will gradually form certain "ethical rules of the game." "Right now, it is everything goes -- precisely because, yes, everything goes -- no good credit checking system, no well-placed fear of violating good norms, one can get away with cheating, et cetera," Mr. Lu explains. Or perhaps the profit-above-all ideology is just a factor of the current business environment: When competition is fierce and margins are razor thin, every extra dollar does count.
While some will say that this same kind of unethical behavior was rampant in the U.S. roughly a century ago, there are elements here that are particular to China. One commonly heard theory is that the Chinese have nothing to believe in: The communists destroyed traditional values and beliefs, leaving nothing sustainable in their place. Now that many Chinese have lost faith in communist ideology, getting rich has, in a sense, become the national religion."
It's true - China is so far from even understanding the basic notions of philanthropy when they are too busy ripping each other off in an effort to get rich. It amazes me how far some are willing to go. The second article talks about fake baozis sold on the street, made out of cardboard and fatty pork. It is pretty wrong.
How is China supposed to go philanthropic when there is so little sense of altruism in the people? Forget the government trying to encourage policies to encourage charity - regardless of the law (which is hardly being followed as it is), people need a fundamental understanding of what it means to be charitable, whether or not official policies encourage it.
To see this kind of rampant, blatant cheating makes me sad for the Chinese people and what they suffer through in harming one another. I don't lose hope, though. In China right now, things can change for the good just as quickly. Let's hope that the seeds of philanthropy will begin to germinate and overcome the trampling of capitalism gone wrong. |
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