Taiwan, China, and other things. Recovered from the defunct TypePad platform.
As will we all, eventually. The Cimmerian has an obituary on the co-creator of D&D.
Elsewhere, the National Review still has John J. Miller’s great piece on Dungeons and Dragons from about four years ago. Reading it, I can’t help but smile from self-recognition.
Searched high and low in Latveria for a Valentine’s Day card, but this was the only one available in shops. Bah!
You’re such a showboat, Victor von Doom.
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(Indirectly, of course!)
Finally started reading Forbidden Nation, Jonathan Manthorpe’s book on Taiwan. The opening chapter is a little sad to read now, brimming as it is with statements like "[The Taiwanese] have only recently extricated themselves from the coils of the corrupt and dictatorial one-party Kuomingtang state, and see no reason to jump into the arms of another one…"
Well, we were ALL a bit more optimistic back in 2005. But getting back to the question: What’s the Augustus-Taiwan connection that Manthorpe suggests? I’ll just briefly summarize his argument (from pages 32-33).
In 30 B.C., Marc Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide, and Octavian conquers Egypt. Within the next 50 years, a lucrative trade between Rome and India apparently develops, via Egyptian ports on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Merchants from India travel abroad, scouring Southeast Asia for ever more exotic goods to ship to the Roman market. Hindu missionaries follow those merchants, as do Indian colonists. Ethnic Malays wind up being displaced from their land, or leave when they find conditions in the new Hindu monarchies are not to their liking.
And where do these Malays go? Well, at least a few of them find their way to Taiwan. Where they end up founding some of the aboriginal tribes that continue to exist on the island to this very day.
Way cool stuff.
(Brian Blessed as Emperor Augustus from I, Claudius)
Commentary:
First off, I’ll admit I know nothing about Indian imperialism two thousand years ago. But I’m somewhat sceptical of the notion that absent the Roman conquest of Egypt, India wouldn’t still have been tempted to establish colonies abroad.
Now, if someone tells me increased Roman-Indian trade sweetened the pot, further fueling India’s colonial ambitions, then sure. I’ll buy that.
Correction (Feb 8/08): Egypt, of course, has ports on the Red Sea, not the actual Indian Ocean. The correction’s been made to the post.
A further boost to Octavian’s reputation came from his reception of envoys from India, seeking to negotiate a trade agreement for the spice route via the Red Sea and Egypt.
(from Richard Halloran’s Augustus: Godfather of Europe, p 304)
Correction of Correction (Sep 15/25): Ancient Egypt did in fact have ports on the Red Sea.
Sep 22/25: It’s a nice story, but as far as I can tell, the Malays never colonized Taiwan. Don’t know where Manthorpe got the idea they did.
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As is my wont, I picked up another boatload of Christmas CDs again this year. Favorites were:
#1. We Three Kings – Reverend Horton Heat
Christmas tunes done in Southern Rock style – wow! Highlights include Frosty the Snowman, as well as instrumental versions of Jingle Bells, We Three Kings, and Winter Wonderland. But best track would have to be What Child is This – a bizarro musical cross between Greensleeves and Ghost Riders in the Night.
#2. Dig That Crazy Christmas – Brian Setzer
There’s no dishonor in placing second after the Rev. Great jump blues versions of Angels We Have Heard on High, Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!, My Favorite Things, and Jingle Bell Rock. In addition, Gettin’ in the Mood (for Christmas) has some very fun lyrics set to Glenn Miller’s In the Mood.
(Didn’t much care for Setzer’s version of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, but on the other hand, his ‘Zat You, Santa Claus? hits the spirit of the song a bit more precisely than Louis Armstrong’s.)
#3. The Venture’s Christmas Album
Instrumental Christmas music – 60’s surf style. Nice versions of Sleigh Ride, What Child is This (titled Snowflakes on the album), Blue Christmas, We Wish You a Merry Christmas as well as White Christmas.
#4. Cool Yule – Bette Midler
Pretty good stuff. The title track bops along cheerfully – but it’s Midler’s very fun Mele Kalikimaka that really knocks me out.
Taken as a whole, this album is far too slow for my taste, so it’s stretching things to call this a favorite. However, some tunes will sound great on my compilation CDs, including Christmas Dream, My Favorite Things, (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays, Here We Come a-Caroling and O Holy Night.
Postscript: Purchased A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra at the last minute, and only had time to listen to it once – so I can’t honestly rate it. Only mention it at all because there was this interesting bit of trivia in the liner notes:
The stirring music [to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing] is by composer Felix Mendelssohn, who originally had it written as part of a choral work commemorating the Tercentenary of John Gutenberg’s invention of printing.
Wikipedia confirms the melody was never intended for Christmas use. Well, I’ll be!
Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year. And if you’re living in Taiwan and you didn’t get any turkey, cheer up. Your local 7-11 might still have some of this DELIGHTFUL poultry-flavored substitute in stock:
(Photo by The Foreigner)
UPDATE: There were other Christmas CDs I could’ve said good things about, but I’d hardly consider them favorites. (While at the opposite end of the spectrum, The New Andy Williams Christmas Album was just about the only purchase I completely regretted. Sorry – didn’t do anything for me.)
One final note: am I the only one greatly disturbed by the sight of Billy Idol singing Jingle Bell Rock?
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The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves!And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she’ll never stand it," our first mate Jackson cried.
…"It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
Funny, I spoke with a friend of mine about citizen photojournalism about a week ago, and I’ve seen two stories on citizen journalism since then. The last one, from Monday’s Taipei Times, I’ll mention first:
Wu Ping-hai (吳平海) has neither a journalism degree nor experience working for newspapers or TV news programs.
But Wu’s video camera has recorded a footage from a wide range of events, documenting the personal stories of ordinary people and the issues that concern local communities.
Wu posts short documentaries on peopo.org, an online citizen news platform started recently by the Taiwan Broadcasting System.
Two of his films document the study of farmland tree frogs, a species only found in Taiwan, and the experiences of foreign spouses learning Mandarin in Meinung Township (美濃), Kaohsiung County.
Wu was one of more than 700 citizen journalists who have contributed to community news coverage since the creation of the platform in April.
They have generated more than 2,200 news stories over the past three months.
[…]
To ensure the quality of stories, the Web site’s administrators have asked would-be contributers to submit a formal application before posting reports and footage.
Over at The Belmont Club, Wretchard speculates where this is headed:
Here’s what I think people will see in the next decade. Big news won’t go away but readers will be able to drill-down on news stories in a way impossible before. For example, suppose new riots break out in the banleius of Paris in 2017. The reader will be able to drill down into every greater detail. Was a man burned on a torched bus? Click and find the micro-journalist who is following the recovery of the victim in a hospital. Or discover how the riots have affected a particular suburb in northern Paris. Not only will you be able to drill down, but you will be able to interact with the news. With online payment systems I believe readers will be able to support micro-journalist efforts to find out more details about an story, in a miniature version of the way readers support Michael Yon in Iraq today.
UPDATE (Jul 26/07): Might citizen journalism be a way for Taiwanese nationalists to circumvent the stranglehold that Chinese nationalists have on Taiwan’s mainstream media? Apparently RCTV in Venezuela carried on in reduced form on YouTube after their license was pulled, so there is some kind of precedent.
Over at The View from Taiwan is a post about falling afoul of unwritten rules here. The examples are new to me, but they brought to mind an amusing description of the medical football players have to take before they are ever considered for the NFL. What follows says nothing about Taiwan, but maybe something about human nature:
When you get to the hospital, you are herded with the others into a long hallway to wait. Chairs line the way and at the end of the corridor is a door. A woman pops her head out the door every so often and beckons to the body filling the seat nearest the door. In the true spirit of the thing, the masses have somehow determined that the correct way to proceed is for all forty remaining bodies to lift their carcasses up, only to drop them immediately in the remaining empty seat. It’s a truncated and ridiculous version of musical chairs without the music. At that rate, you will get up and sit down seventeen times before you are beckoned. You revolt. You decide to sit and not move. You’ll wait for ten or so spaces to open up before you shuffle on down.
When four empty chairs are between you and the next guy, those behind you start to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Someone is not obeying the rules. That’s not a good thing. You start to feel like the grandpa snaking through the mountains on a single lane highway with twenty cars crawling up his back because he’s going five miles under the speed limit. You surrender and take up your role in the mindless shuffle. Despite your sense of the absurdity, you feel much better.
-Tim Green, The Dark Side of the Game, p 8-9
Just saw the 1963 movie on DVD. I may comment on it later, but here are a few quotes which caught my interest:
Dowager Empress: The colonel’s death is of no consequence. But his life has set my prince against my general. And this disturbs the tranquility of the morning. Let him die for this offense.
Major Lewis: (to his troop of soldiers) Remember, it’s just the same here as anywhere else in the world. Everything has a price. So pay your money, and don’t expect any free samples.
(As one commenter at IMDB notes, "you can bet the commodity he is referring to isn’t pork fried rice.")
Maj. Lewis: (tossing 6 months of mail into a wastebasket) Open a letter, you have to read it. Read it, you may have to answer it.
Baroness Ivanoff: Are you always this direct?
Maj. Lewis: I’m a marine, ma’am. I don’t have much time.
Baroness Ivanoff: Have you found this approach very successful?
Maj. Lewis: Not really, no. But it’s the only one I know.
Baroness Ivanoff: (about sharing a hotel room with Maj. Lewis) It’s a very small room.
Maj. Lewis: Well, I’ve been in tight places before.
(Pretty racy for 1963!)
Sir Arthur: If all Hell is going to break loose, it will not be because we have provoked it. So we’ll all just…walk softly, and hope for the best.
Maj. Lewis: Even if we walk on our knees, we can’t stop this.
Sir Arthur: The Boxer bandits have been with us for years, major. It could be that you’re unnecessarily alarmed.
Maj. Lewis: Well, the next time I see some…bandits murdering an English priest, I’ll try not to be alarmed.
Prince Tuan: You must be the American who had the unfortunate encounter with the Boxers this morning.
Maj. Lewis: I’m afraid it was the British missionary who had the hard time, sir.
Prince Tuan: The Chinese government is most distressed, but you must not conclude that all Boxers are bandits. Most of them are harmless vagabonds. Entertainers in the marketplaces (nodding toward Baroness Ivanoff) – much like the gypsies in your country.
Sir Arthur: You must forgive us, your highness, but the major does not seem to understand that here, we must play the game according to Chinese rules.
Maj. Lewis: I apologize, Sir Arthur, but I don’t think his highness came here tonight to play games.
1) Never realized naval mines were so effective
(The story focuses on Chinese vulnerability to naval mines, though I suspect Taiwan isn’t much better off.)
2) China arming Islamofascists in Iraq & Afghanistan via Iran
The weapons were described as "late-model" arms that have not been seen in the field before and were not left over from Saddam Hussein‘s rule in Iraq
[…]
The arms shipments show that the idea that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism is "utter nonsense," [a defense department] official said.
3) America preparing for possible cyber-war with China
(Favorite quote: "The Chinese foreign ministry rejected [last month’s Pentagon] report as ‘brutal interference’ in internal affairs and insisted that Beijing’s military preparations were purely defensive.")
A hat tip to the Drudge Report for items 2 & 3
UPDATE (Jun 17/07): The ten worst jobs in science, according to Popular Science Magazine. Lowlights include:
#10: Whale Feces Researcher
[Whale feces pioneer Rosalind Rolland] began taking along sniffer dogs that can detect whale droppings from as far as a mile away. When they bark, she points her research vessel in the direction of the brown gold, and as the boat approaches the feces—the excrement usually stays afloat for an hour after the deed is done and can be bright orange and oily depending on the type of plankton the whale feeds on—Rolland and her crew begin scooping up as much matter as they can using custom-designed nets.
#5: Coursework Carcass Preparer
Remember that first whiff of formaldehyde when the teacher brought out the frogs in ninth-grade biology? Now imagine inhaling those fumes eight hours a day, five days a week. That’s the plight of biological- supply preparers, the folks who poison, preserve, and bag the worms, frogs, cats, pigeons, sharks and even cockroaches that end up in high-school and college biology classrooms.
#3: Elephant Vasectomist
What’s one foot across and sits behind two inches of skin, four inches of fat and 10 inches of muscle? That’s right: an elephant’s testicle. Which means veterinarian Mark Stetter’s newest invention—a four-foot-long fiber-optic laparoscope attached to a video monitor—has to be a heavy-duty piece of equipment to sterilize a randy bull pachyderm.
Hat tip to Instapundit.
UPDATE #2: Rock / Pop group Fountains of Wayne with a wry description of life on the road. A sample:
Anyway, about a week ago, we started our first tour in several years in typically grand fashion, playing at a computer store in New York City. We had to cut down on the pyro effects for this show, due to the low ceilings. But I think it was a nice way for people to get to see us up close and check their e-mail at the same time. We played a short set which was billed as "acoustic" because at least one of us played an acoustic instrument. The after-show debauchery included intense discussions with the sales staff about the upcoming release of the Apple phone.
[…]
And then we have a short break from "the road" before heading off for a few shows in Europe, which has become overrun with Europeans in recent years.
Hat tip to The Corner.
UPDATE #3: Never knew that Jude Law had a Rorschach tattoo. And that he really covets the role of Ozymandias.
(Rorschach and Ozymandias images from Weird Space.)
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Thursday’s Taipei Times revealed that the unveiling of the memorial provided a rare opportunity for Taiwan’s representative in Washington, D.C. to meet with the American president. Careful, Mr. Bush, China might accuse you of PROVOKING it:
US President George W. Bush shook hands and chatted with Representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) on Tuesday while attending the dedication of a memorial to those killed by communist regimes around the world.
Actually, that’s not why I brought the subject up at all. The real reason is that one line in the story reminded me of something I wanted to write about a month ago:
The VOC Memorial was more than a decade in the making. The US Congress passed an act in 2003 on the establishment of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to raise funds to build the monument in memory of the more than 100 million people killed by communist regimes — from China and Soviet Union to Cambodia and North Korea. [emphasis added]
Recall that a month ago, cost was one of the major complaints raised against renaming the Chiang Kai-shek memorial in Taipei. It seemed to me at the time that one of the best ways to counter that argument would have been to call for the establishment of a private charity to raise funds for the renaming. After all, "It costs too much," can hardly be said once people OTHER THAN YOURSELF voluntarily commit to paying for it. Pass the hat around, and see just how much the Taiwanese value the re-dedication. Those who hate the idea would be free to give nothing. But I’ll bet those who WERE committed would’ve given, and given generously.
Both the World War II Memorial and the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington were funded chiefly by private donations. While I’m sure their respective foundations encountered the problem of free ridership, I note that in the end, the memorials DID manage to get built. What we have here is a nice, small-government approach to the problem, which has the additional virtue of helping build civil society at the same time.
UPDATE (Jun 21/07): That was predictable. The Butchers of Beijing threaten war over Wu’s handshake with George Bush:
[Chinese officials] expressed stern-faced concern and spoke of dire consequences during a press conference as China made clear its fury that Bush had even chosen to acknowledge Wu’s visit.
“We insist to keep the current peaceful relations as we promised Taiwan’s citizens. We have prepared to stop (prohibit) any activities, conduct and any excuses to divide Taiwan away from China in whatever cause, the activities are going to cause serious harm. Chenshuibian’s (President of Taiwan) conspiracy of an independent Taiwan causes serious harm in our peaceful relations. We will resort to military action if they continue these irresponsible actions,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yang Li. (rough translation). [emphasis added]
Hat tip to The View from Taiwan.
