Sam Crane
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Sun Tzu does Survivor: China
My friend and former student Kim, who blogs at The Small Pond (and is especially good these days on Hawaiian politics), commented on another post that Sun Tzu has popped up on the US TV show, "Survivor: China." … Continue reading
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Mencius and the Jena 6
The large demonstrations this week in Jena Louisiana, protesting the apparent disproportionate punishment of six African-American high school students for beating up a white fellow student, raise many questions about race and justice in America. And Mencius can… Continue reading
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A Reminder for Bush as He Continues to Deny the Reality of Iraq
To find glory in victory is to savor killing people, and if you savor killing people you’ll never guide all beneath heaven. Tao Te Ching, passage 31 Continue reading
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Moral Models
It may be too early to rename the CCP the Chinese Confucian Party, but this story (hat tip, CDT) certainly demonstrates how seriously the Party takes the revival of Confucianism: The Chinese Communist Party has selected 53 "national… Continue reading
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How John McCain is Not Confucian
Over at his wonderfully named ("A Ku Indeed!" – which refers to a great and cryptic passage in the Analects: "a ku [sacred ritual vessel], not a ku, a ku indeed, a ku indeed," 6.25), Chris Panza (a… Continue reading
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Mencius in the News, Again (Even if Unnamed, Again)
This headline jumped out at me today: "Is Do Unto Others Written Into Our Genes?" And I immediately thought: Mencius would say "Yes!" The article centers on the research of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, especially his book,… Continue reading
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Confucian Rap: Remember the Name
This may seem a bit disrespectful – and I certainly don’t mean it that way for either Confucians or rappers – but I can’t help but sense a Confucian overtone to this well-known song by Fort Minor (a… Continue reading
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I Think They Were Smarter…
A nice post over at Granite Studio, riffing off some ideas from New Kid on the Hallway, about how we moderns might think people of the past were somehow less intelligent than us. Both historians bemoan the tendency… Continue reading
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Learning About Lin Yutang…
…that’s what I think I will have to do, after reading this piece in today’s NYT: Born in China at the end of the Qing dynasty, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Mr. Lin had a Western education… Continue reading
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Joe Zawinul, Taoist Sage
Joe Zawinul died two days ago. His band, Weather Report provided the sound track of my college days. "Birdland," however overplayed it may have become, is a joyous piece (you can hear it at the NPR site here),… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 