Latest Posts
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What Larry Summers Should Do Now
You can resolve great rancor,but rancor always lingers on. Understanding the more noble way,a sage holds the creditor’s half of contractsand yet asks nothing of others.Those with Integrity tend to such contracts;those without Integrity tend to the collection of taxes.… Continue reading
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Tao and The Market
Over at Danwei, Dror Poleg notices a resonance between Taoism and classical free market economics, with a deft change of one word in this passage from the Tao Te Ching: The Market abides in non-action, yet nothing… Continue reading
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Hunger for Learning
Maybe this is what Confucius had in mind: American scientists: hunger makes people learn better printResize A new scientific study finds that hunger can enhance people’s learning and memory performance and make people more intelligent. According to the… Continue reading
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Neoconservatives: Little Men Stuck in Doctrines
I imagine the article by Francis Fukuyama, "After Neoconservatism," from yesterday’s NYT will be the talk of the internet today (the Duck notieced it). Let me add a couple of quick comments, loosely based on an ancient Chinese… Continue reading
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This is not what Confucius had in mind
I have discussed Confucius’s attention to naming things – how honest identification of a thing allows for action – several times on this blog. But when I saw this story in today’s China Daily, I had to say… Continue reading
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Change
Peter Hessler has a nice piece, "Hutong Karma," in the February 13 issue of the New Yorker, which, unfortunately, is not posted on their website. He describes the little lane, or hutong, where he lives in Beijing and… Continue reading
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In Yielding There Is Completion
As some of you may know, that is one of my favorite passages from the Tao Te Ching (#22): In yielding there is completion; in bent is straight; in hollow is full… And it came immediately… Continue reading
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Returning to Past I Ching Readings
On of the benefits of saving past I Ching readings in my archives, is the possibility it creates to go back and think about earlier prognostications and how interpretations might change over time. Of late, with my teaching… Continue reading
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Naming Liberalism
A curious commentary popped up in China Daily today. It is a translation of a piece that ran in a Chinese magazine, Caijing, by a veteran journalist, Huangfu Ping, entitled, "The Reform of China Must Not Waiver." One… Continue reading
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Universal Disability
This obit ran in the NYT today: John Belluso, a young playwright who translated his own experiences with physical disability into a prolific body of promising work, died on Friday at a hotel in Manhattan. He was 36 and… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 