Latest Posts
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Winter Solstice – reprise
I don’t recycle too many posts here, but this is the busy season. I am running out the door to the store and library and who knows where else. So, let me re-post something that goes back to… Continue reading
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Lee Myung-bak as a reminder that Korea is not as Confucian as some would want us to think.
Lee Myung-bak, the candidate of the conservative Grand National Party, won a significant electoral victory in South Korea’s presidential poll yesterday. The elections were free and fair, though turnout was relatively low (about 63%), and Lee captured about… Continue reading
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The Tao of Virtuality
Found an article on the China Daily site reporting on the Pew Internet and American Life Project (which I had just noticed on the AP wire). The report is large and covers a lot of ground,… Continue reading
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More Taoist Cosmology
A story today in the NYT describes some of the debates among physicists over the apparent order of the universe. Is the seeming law-like "order" something that transcends space and time – something timeless and absolute – or… Continue reading
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Instantaneous Interaction: More on Confucian Facebook Friends
A while back I posted some thoughts on what Confucianism might make of the social networking sites like Facebook. My initial sense was this: While, for Confucians, our family obligations are primary, we need friends, face-to-face friends, to… Continue reading
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Ancient Sages in New Jersey
Today’s news: Gov. on S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment. Confucius would be happy. As I… Continue reading
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Creating Insight, Forging New Paths
A nice little piece in today’s NYT Sunday Magazine by Annping Chin, describing the revival of ancient Chinese thought in contemporary China, told from the perspective of a Chinese philosophy student. She mentions a fairly common view of… Continue reading
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Naming Torture
Yesterday Andrew Sullivan deconstructed an NYT article that avoided using the word "torture" for assaults that are obviously torture. The money graf: It is not a disputable opinion that waterboarding is torture. There is no debate here. There… Continue reading
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Not Searching for Confucius
Another reminder of just how irrelevant Confucianism is to young, urban, middle class, tech savvy Chinese people these days (and, for that matter, Americans of similar demographic profile). Here, thanks to CDT, is a comparison of the most… Continue reading
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Warlord Blogger
I just stumbled upon The Yan Xishan blog, named for famous Shanxi warlord (whose name is rendered in Wade-Giles as, Yen Hsi-shan) of the early twentieth century. The author writes in Yan’s voice – it”s great fun! He’s… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 