Current Affairs
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Is the US “Surge” in Iraq Working? Sun Tzu would not be impressed
A few days ago a reader named Jeff, who has a Sun Tzu site, suggests that the US "surge" in Iraq is working. Is it? At one level, the increase in US troops in recent months… 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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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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What Parents Owe Their Children
This morning, listening to the radio, I heard a story about my former student, Nate Krissoff, and his father, Dr. Bill Krissoff. Nate was in the Marines and was killed in Iraq on this day last… Continue reading
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IQ, The Brain, and Mencius: “Think about barley.”
Richard E. Nisbett has a nice op-ed in today’s NYT, "All Brains Are the Same Color," in which he counters those who want to argue that intelligence (however it is defined) is primarily genetically determined: In fact, the… Continue reading
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CIA Lying – What Would Sun Tzu Do?
Rather unsurprisingly, it has now been revealed that the CIA lied and broke the law (by disobeying a court order to produce "documentary evidence") to cover up its use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (read: torture). So, now we… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 