Shanghai, part 10: Middle East and City at Night

At the World Expo, we wandered around the Middle East area for a little while.





We went into the Oman Pavilion because the line was short. Common theme for us, eh?







Inside, every pavilion has exhibits shouting "Our country is great!" The pavilions all look completely different, and yet they're all basically identical. "Just like people," replied Chunlin.

We sat and rested on a park bench for a while as the sun set. We considered walking around more to see the pavilions after dark, but we decided our feet hurt too much and thus we should head for the subway.



Chunlin wanted to see the riverfront at night, so instead of taking the 7 line directly back to the hotel, we took it the other direction and transfered to the 2. We got off at Pudong and saw the skyscrapers that were shrouded in mist before.




We then got back on the 2 under the river. Next stop Nanjing Road, the closest stop to the Bund. Nanjing Road is a busy pedestrian shopping street. Neon and crowds.






After a couple blocks -- "What street is that?" I had taken us the wrong direction. West instead of east. How had I messed that up?

We had no further energy to walk to the river. We thus got back on the subway and headed home to Xincun Lu. Bus? Where's the bus stop? No bus stop? Walk limp crawl the half mile from the station to our hotel.

Four sore feet, once more.

Further foreign photos on flickr, for sure.

Gaza

I applaud Israel on their restraint in the current conflict with Hamas. It is not time to use nuclear weapons . . . yet.

Iraq's New Flag

New on top, old below.

They removed the three Baathist stars and changed the style of the caligraphy. Apparently the old version was based on Saddam Hussein's handwriting.

From the dreaded New York Times:

Members of Parliament voted 110 to 50 for the flag, which was introduced in 2004 and bears the red, white and black stripes of Iraq’s original banner. The design preserves a sense of continuous national identity, while purging the flag of Baathist allusions, supporters say.

Kurdish politicians, many of whom survived the genocidal gas bombings by Hussein forces in the Anfal, or spoils of war, campaign of the 1980s, were among the fiercest critics of the old flag. In 2006, Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, refused to fly the flag from government offices, prompting fear of Kurdish separatism.

On Tuesday, however, Kurdish lawmakers pushed for a compromise, dropping their insistence on yellow lettering for the Arabic inscription, for a design without Baathist references.

Zuhair Humadi, a senior adviser to the Shiite-led Iraqi government, said the Kurds sought the deal before an international conference of members of Arab Parliaments in weeks.

“They won’t come if only the Kurdish flag is flying,” Mr. Humadi said of the Arab leaders. “And Barzani wanted that meeting to be in Kurdistan, and he will not allow Saddam Hussein’s flag to be flown. So they agreed to this.” [...]

Several lawmakers said that because the flag had been changed out of Kurdish expediency, they expected it to be changed again.

When I learned my flags as a kid, there were three red-white-black flags with green stars. The one-star flag was North Yemen (the star is now gone, after unification with South Yemen). The two-star flag was and is Syria. And the three-star flag was Iraq (no script back then).

(North Yemen was in a confederation with Syria and Egypt (together the United Arab Republic) when they adopted their flag. They dropped one of the two stars from the UAR flag. When the UAR disolved, Egypt replaced the stars with a golden eagle. There are now four similar red-white-black tricolors: plain (Yemen), eagle (Egypt), script (Iraq), and two stars (Syria).)

How long do you think it will it be before the tv networks change their graphics?

(ht: Tigerhawk)

Al Gore Vindicated

. . . in his own mind.

Mr. Cold himself has won the Nobel Peace Prize for . . . being a cult leader? Something like that.

Or maybe it had something to do with all the factual errors in that movie of his.

But let's take a look at other recent Nobel Peace Prize Winners, shall we?

2005 - IAEA, for letting Iran and others build nuclear bombs under their noses.
2002 - Jimmy Carter, for hating Israel so vehemently.
2001 - Kofi Annan and the UN, for being corrupt and a bunch of corrupt thugs.
1994 - Yasser Arafat, for hating Israel so vehemently.

And these are just the names I recognize. . .

Walk Faster!

To me, it seems like everyone's walking slowly. But apparently that's changing. A new study shows that walking speeds the world over have increased 10% in the past ten years.

Still not fast enough.

Singapore's residents have been found to be walking the fastest, followed by Copenhagen and Madrid.

New York, generally considered one of the world's most frenetic cities, is eighth, while London has come 12th and Tokyo is placed 16th in the British study.

[...]

In Singapore, walking pace has risen by 30 per cent and in Guangzhou, China, the figure is 20 per cent.

The most laid-back places are Blantyre in Malawi and Manama, Bahrain.

The research was carried out by Professor Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, who measured the average time it took 35 adults in each city to walk 18 metres.

I don't think I'd want to move to Singapore. I'd rather move to someplace where's there are fewer people in my way...

Feb 7 morning

Stopped at Huka Falls, which was on the itinerary for yesterday. The entire huge Lake Taupo drains through a narrow gorge. Churning whitewater cascades down to a twenty-foot falls. Then back to turquoise and back to dark blue, calm and peacefull. Powerful and beautiful.

(Chunlin's photo above)

Drove awhile and now we're at Waiotapu. Or more precisely, sitting at Lady Knox Geyser, waiting for its daily 10:15 eruption. Hundreds of people from all over the world (Japan, Germany, Israel, . . .) all wait patiently as well. Soon.

Burble burble burble, boom! goes the geyser. Water blows across the crowd and people hurry to get out of the way. Just a heavy (cool) mist is all. It tames back down and we drive back to Waiotapu proper.

Trail up, trail down, bubbling pits everywhere.

I didn't write it. . . I just posted it.

Controversial statements for the sake of controversy, courtesy of IMAO's Frank J:

* It should be illegal for women to get abortions under any circumstances. Also, the federal government should be able to impregnate women whenever it feels like it.

* The only people who should pay taxes are the poor as punishment for how little they produce.

* Gays should be allowed to marry... if they promise to stop being gay.

* American Indians should be deported back to Russia.

* The only legitimate reason for war is a slow news cycle.

* Not only should all Americans be able to carry guns at all times, they must carry guns! Also, they must carry katanas because my country is not going to be a place vulnerable to ninja attacks.

* There should be a holiday to celebrate rich white men.

* The Jews are responsible for all wars... both real and those depicted in movies. Also, the Cola War is all about oil.

* Let's not say "genocide" like it's a bad thing.

* There's no time to check for papers; anyone Mexican-looking should be immediately deported... as well as anyone seen eating a burrito. Taco Bell employees should be deported as well.

* Instead of Iraq being controlled by different Islamic factions, the government should be handed over to the Scientologists.

* Maybe Bush should be more like Hitler.

* In order to moderate Islamic beliefs, all us critics must first convert to Islam.

* I'm glad the Crocodile Hunter is dead.

With a good addition in the comments by Remulak MoxArgon:

*A "Hot Chicks Only" immigration policy.

Cut and Run Now!!

I approve of the immediate withdrawl of American forces from Iraq, just so long as we allow the military to topple one or more neighboring dictatorships on their way home.

The two biggest problems with retreating from Iraq are the incredible chaos that will ensue and the worldwide view that the United States is weak.

But, if we destroy the Iranian, Saudi, and Syrian governments (this should only take a week or two, maybe a month), and then bring all the troops back to America, at least the second problem would be alleviated.

The US military isn't made for peacekeeping and nation-building. It's designed for killing and destroying. Do you use a steak knife to feed a cow? No. So let's use the military for its intended purpose.

As for the first problem mentioned above, Iraq is in moderate chaos at the moment because the neighboring dictatorships are jockeying for position to take Iraq as a puppet state. The Saudi royals are fueling the Sunni insurgency and the Iranian mullahs are paying for the Shiite insurgency (counter-insurgency?).

If we give the Saudis and Iranians enough trouble at home, then those countries won't have time or money to waste on their Mesopotamian neighbors. They'll be fighting for their own countries' futures. And thus Iraqi will be free to live peacefully and everybody will agree that the United States is the most powerful and best nation on the planet.

Weather

'Twas turning into a sunny day, but now a dense fog has rolled in. I can't even see the transit center or the mall anymore.

Ah well. 'Twill be sunny once more, soon enough.

Does anyone have any favorite Kuwaiti recipes they'd be willing to share with me?

IgNobels Announced!

The IgNobels are alternative prizes for scientists whose research isn't deemed serious enough for the Nobel committee, but still is pretty interesting stuff. This year's winners include:

Two Australian researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO) have won an IgNobel for their research on how many photos you need to take to ensure that nobody in a group photo has their eyes closed.

Ivan Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip May, of the University of California Los Angeles, have won the ornithology prize for their pioneering work on the ability of the humble woodpecker to avoid head injury.

Wasmia Al-Houty, of Kuwait University, and Faten Al-Mussalam, of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, have taken home the nutrition prize for showing that dung beetles are in fact finicky eaters.

Francis Fesmire, of the University of Tennessee, has been awarded the medicine Ig for his report Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.

Physics laureates Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of Paris University are to be honoured for their insights into why dry spaghetti tends to break into more than two pieces.

Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, has been awarded the peace prize for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellent. The device makes an annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults. He later used the same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.

Three US scientists - Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand - have been awarded the acoustics prize for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

While the conclusions of a group of scientists from Valencia University and the University of Illes Balears in Spain are not immediately clear, the judges have deemed their study Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature worthy of the chemistry prize.

Also honoured for cheese research, Bart Knols from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands has won the biology award for his part in research showing that female malaria mosquito are equally attracted to limburger cheese and human feet.

The scientists take this award seriously nowadays, with 8 of this year's 10 recipients flying to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the ceremony.

Happy New Year!

I'm sure the sun has set somewhere in the world already today, so therefore it's Rosh Hashanah!

This evening marks the start of year 5767. Wow. Them Jews have been around a really long time. Oh wait. That's counting since the beginning of the world. Nevermind.

Hm. . . Were Adam and Eve Jewish? How about Noah? Nah. I think the first Jews were Abraham and Sarah, right?

And just think: the Jewish people are still living on the same patch of land as they were way back then. All those years and they never left home. . .

Apologies

So the Pope said some stuff about Mohammed that riled up Muslims around the world. And now he's apologized. Sort of. It depends who you ask.

The AP, for instance, says that Benedict stopped short of the full apology that the Muslims demanded.

Al Jazeera, however, acts as if it's a full apology.

Who's right? Well, both. Neither. To me, it sounds like one of those wishy-washy apologies: "I'm sorry you feel that way" as opposed to "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Here's what the Vatican said:

"[Pope Benedict XVI] sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions."

I don't know. Maybe something is lost in translation between German, Italian, English, and Arabic. I just wish he hadn't felt the need to apologize at all.

United Dictators

Quick! Who has a grenade?



It's three of your favorite dictators meeting together with all the rest of them in Havana. Left to right, that's Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Lukashenko of Belarus, and Chavez of Venezuela.

This one's an odd pairing, though:



That's India's Prime Minister Singh hugging Iran's President Ahmadinejad. I guess it's just proof that the Non-Aligned Movement isn't prejudiced against non-dicatorships.

Here, this one's more like it:



Musharraf of Pakistan and Raul Castro of Cuba, of course.

This next one must be photoshopped, because Fidel is dead, isn't he?

"Sisters in front!"

I walked over to the local mosque just now to take a look at the Peace March. They were, of course, running late. In fact, the Muslim contingent was still quietly filing out of the mosque.

Overall, the march seemed quite innocuous, full of naive idealists (and Muslims supporting their "sisters" and "brothers" in Lebanon). No Israel=Nazi signs like you get at similar protests in California and wherever. Seattle is just too polite for that sort of thing.

A woman handed out cardboard flags with Lebanon's printed on one side and Old Glory on the other, with the words "United We Stand" on the red bars of the Lebanese flag (in English and Arabic (I assume that's what it said)).

I counted about a dozen uniformed police, on foot, motorcycles, and bicycles. I counted about a half-dozen reporters and media photographers, most of them poised a block down the street to capture the oncoming horde (100 to 150 marchers). The county has people with walkie-talkies keeping an eye on things so they can tell the buses when to start re-routing.

The media awaits:


Rally in the parking lot:


The mosque entrance:


Our police, biding their time:


Muslims and moonbats mingling:

If I remember correctly, the man on the left in the tan shirt was the one directing traffic to get people organized. "Sisters in front!" he called out, trying to put a friendly face on this little parade.

At least this man is even-handed:

Oh wait. Do you think he means the Israelis are the terrorists? Nah.

This elderly moonbat asked me to take his photo with his own camera:

It looks like Israel and Afghanistan were added as afterthoughts. At least he has Darfur on there, which is where the Arabs are the unequivical agressors against the non-Muslims. And neither side there trusts the UN. I wonder why.

Many identical signs:


Fun for the whole family:

The slash-"violence" sign was another mass-produced one.

March spokesman and a journalist who's dressed almost as a parody of herself:


Some more mass-produced signs, ready for anyone:


I didn't bother to see what this man's petition said:

From what his sign says, he seems oblivious to the fact that the Palestinians want to push the Jews into the sea.

Our famed bike cops, waiting:


The whole thing seemed too boring, so I left and walked back to my office.

Near East Football

It's the fourth quarter with ten minutes left on the clock. The Tel Aviv Blue Stars are ahead 49-27, but the Green Bay Packers used to be down 28-3. Oh wait, that's not the Packers. Sorry, I got confused by their yellow and green. That's the Tehran Proxies on the field! In any case, the Proxies found themselves far out of this game, but are now making rapid advances. The Blue Stars are still trouncing the Proxies, however.

So why would either team want to quit playing?

Failure Should Never Be Rewarded

Whether it's Hezbollah and their badly aimed rockets, or a coworker that missed a deadline, or a child's soccer team that lost a game, don't reward failure. It merely reinforces unwanted behavior. Don't take them out for ice cream until they win a game, or else they'll never bother trying to win. Let them explain to the client why the deadline was missed, or else they'll never meet a deadline ever again. Treat the terrorists as if they actually hit their intended targets, or else they'll just keep shooting and killing.

Well, okay. Attempted murder shouldn't receive as harsh a penalty as actual murder. But all I'm saying is that you shouldn't give a guy a new car and a million dollars just because he failed to kill his intended target.

And that's exactly how people with the European/Liberal worldview seem to want to treat Hezbollah, et al.

Baghdad Jim

Three weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed a resolution (HR 921) which supported Israel's right to defend itself against its enemies (Hezbollah, Hamas). I noticed that my representative (who I would never vote for) voted against the resolution. He was one of eight "no" votes.

So I asked him why.

He finally responded today. Here is his reply, in full:

Dear Mark:

Thank you for your recent communication regarding the conflict between Israel and the terrorist forces of Hezbollah and Hamas. These attacks make it even more urgent for our government to pursue an even-handed foreign policy in the Middle East, a goal that has yet to be embraced by the House of Representatives.

Recently, the House voted to pass House Resolution 921, which guaranteed American support for Israeli military action anywhere in the Middle East. One clause in the resolution said that we "support Israel's right to take appropriate action to defend itself, including to conduct operations both in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it." I have unwavering support for Israel, its safety, security and right to exist, but I also know from experience how this kind of language can be interpreted. I voted against this bill because it is a blank check that could include such rash actions as a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

A resolution in the House of Representatives will not change what the world already knows about U.S. support for Israel's right to exist, but it might encourage what the world already fears: a wider war with greater casualties, undermining fragile but crucial support for Israel among Arab nations, and further endangering Israelis and other innocent civilians across the region.

As rockets continue to kill innocent civilians in both Southern Lebanon and Israel, lasting peace in the Middle East might seem like a pipe dream. The United States, however, cannot sit idly by and condone further killing on both sides of this conflict. At the recent talks in Rome, American diplomats failed to support a cease-fire proposal that was supported by the majority of the 15 other nations participating in the talks.

It is with this in mind that I have signed on to co-sponsor H. Con. Res. 450 calling for an immediate cessation of violence. We must use our influence as the world's only superpower to foster peace in the world's most violent regions.

Thank you for writing and I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the 109th Congress continues.

Sincerely,
Jim McDermott
Member of Congress

Maybe I should ask him what he thinks of Frank J's proposal.

Nah. Here's the response I sent him:

In the world, there are good guys and there are bad guys. Do not treat democratic, free nations as equal to repressive, theocratic regimes. If you truly want peace in the world, you must defeat the bad guys. Otherwise, we're just their dhimmis, bowing our heads till they chop them off.

Mark Knoke

My Geopolitical Analysis

The Good Guys:
United States of America
Israel
Australia
United Kingdom
South Korea
Taiwan

The Bad Guys:
Iran
North Korea
Syria
Saudi Arabia
China
Russia

Soccer

So Poland, Costa Rica, and now Serbia-Montenegro have no chance of making the second round. I guess I can stop rooting for them now.

Australia and South Korea are still both in the thick of it, although Australia can't lose against Croatia on Thursday, or else they're out. Oh well, I guess I'd just root for Croatia in that case!

Ukraine is playing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia later today. Orange Revolution versus no revolution. Go Ukraine!!

Israel Caves In

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a speech earlier this week, "One more suicide bombing and I'll give them whatever they want." If the Palestinians don't end their terrorist attacks, "whether outside a popular nightclub in Haifa or in a crowded marketplace in Be'er Sheva," then the Israelis will just have to pack up and leave. "Even as I speak, the full might of the Israeli military is standing by to surrender should another suicide bombing occur."

Call me a cynic, but this doesn't ring quite true. Maybe I should check my source. The Onion is a reliable news organization, right?