The Useless Tree

Sam Crane

  • Still Yet More on Yu Dan

        A piece in today’s NYT reminds us of the popularity of Yu Dan’s take on The Analects.  Not much value-added here, however.  Yu has been something of celebrity for over a year now.  I have blogged about her… Continue reading

  • Tao Poem

          A reader sends in this poem, by Charles Wright, heard on this morning’s Writer’s Almanac, on NPR: After Reading T’ao Ch’ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass Dry spring, no rain for five weeks. Already the lush… Continue reading

  • Confucians Against The Great Wall

        I saw this story today (hat tip, CDT): The Great Wall of China, built to withstand raiding hordes from the steppes, is now in peril from a far more insidious threat: sandstorms generated by desertification in the country’s… Continue reading

  • Mencius in a Beijing Courtroom

         There was something about this story, related by Roland (scroll down to "Beijing Courtroom Drama), that stuck with me from yesterday.  It is a sad tale of human pain and desperation: In April 2005, the 6-year-old son of… Continue reading

  • The Tao Diet

         Earlier this year, not long after my fiftieth birthday (my summer students seemed shocked when I told them I was born in 1957 – in the middle of the last century!), I went to the doctor for the… Continue reading

  • Sun Tzu on the Failure of the Generals

         Fred Kaplan has an article in yesterday’s NYT Sunday Magazine, "Challenging the Generals," which follows up on the critique of US military leadership in Iraq put forward by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling.       The problem, it seems… Continue reading

  • Green Confucius

         A few weeks ago I posted a response to a piece from the blog Western Confucian which quoted Pan Yue, a Chinese environmental protection administrator, arguing that ancient Chinese philosophy is especially good in respecting the natural environment. … Continue reading

  • This Just In: Chuang Tzu Is Right!

         Today’s NYT: Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience: The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr.… Continue reading

  • Oh, And By The Way…Bush Lost The War

         I have read a bit of the commentary on Bush’s bizarre Iraq-Vietnam comparison speech.  It strikes me as bizarre because opening up this line of comparison can only work against Bush’s desire to stay in Iraq.  He is… Continue reading

  • Chinese Solutions to the Religion Problem

         Mark Lilla’s article in last Sunday’s NYT Magazine has been circling through my mind all week.  While he does a great job explicating the ways in which modernization does not fully eradicate our tendency toward religion, which he… Continue reading