One day, a man and woman went out for a walk. After an hour, the man began to feel tired and wanted to take a break. "Are you getting tired?" the man asked.

"No," said the woman. "I'm not tired at all."

"Oh, okay," said the man. "Well then, let's keep walking."

After another hour, the woman began to feel hungry because she didn't eat breakfast that morning. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

But the man, who had eaten a large breakfast that morning, said, "Nope. Not hungry at all."

"Okay," said the woman, and they both continued walking, tired and hungry.

"I understand that the feelings of many people are hurt by Cohen's show. But we must have a sense of humor and respect the creative freedom of others." —Rakhat Aliyev, deputy foreign minister of Kazakstan and son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbaye, in reaction to comedian, Sacha Boran Cohen's new parody movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which the comedian pretends to be a socially ignorant Kazakh. Read the full article

It's good to see people respond maturely, rather than issue fatwas or blow up busses or something. Hurray for Kazakhstan.

times when
he felt real-
ly de-
pressed he'd

walk a-
mong-
st crowds,
and list-

en to his i-
Pod, loud—Radio-
head, "No
Surprises"—and i-

magine him-
self in his ver-
y own mus-
ic video: slow

motion, compression
shot. Like Pete-
r Parker in that
Footos commercial.

Thai place
in Beijing, serv-
ants dress-
ed like knaves
and wenches, hands
clasped in ad
-oration, greet
you, worship you-
r arrival, as
though you we-
re the Budd-
ha him-
self. Confu-
cian stat-
us fetish.

There are two lights in the main section of my studio apartment: one over the TV area (near the front door), and one over the sleeping area (near the window). But the light switches are a bit confusing. First of all, it's not really a "switch" at all; it's just a one-inch by two-inch rectangle that toggles up and down. Second of all, when the lights are "off," the switches are "up"; when the lights are "on," the switches are down. Lastly, the light switch nearest the door is the one that turns on the light by the window, and the light switch nearest the window is the one that turns on the light by the door. So it feels doubly backwards to me. (Did you follow all that?)

I still haven't been able to adjust to it. When I leave the house or get ready to go to sleep, I walk over to my light switch and I just stare at it. Up? Down? Left switch? Right switch? Which one is? Which one to do I push? I ponder all of these questions for what seems like minutes. Which one did I push last time? Was I correct? Let's think this thing through... That light over there is on now. Which means this switch is the one I push to get it on or off. And the switch right now is… up? Wait… is this really the switch? Yes, this is the one. This one, here. Just tap this switch right here…

So I tap the switch, and instead of turning off the light I thought was associated with that switch, I switch on the other light that had been off. I swear, you'd think I'd have learned it by now.

The kitchen and bathroom lights are the same, with one extra difference. Each room has two lights, yes, and the nearest switch powers the farthest light, and vice versa. The only difference is that the light switches are not to be found inside the kitchen and the bathroom, they are outside. So if you want to turn a light on or off, you have to: 1) go to the door, 2) reach your hand around the opening, 3) feel for the switches, 4) consider for a moment which light it is you think you're about to turn on or off, 5) cross your fingers, and 6) give it ago

Four times out of five, I'm wrong.

:p

Wikipedia is now available in China again. Wikiology, despite any flaws -- "bugs," really -- is going to be the next social force of the internet. More than just a source of information, wiki is an invaluable tool that reveals the way society works. We all walk around with our own canon of experience. Society, too, is rich with its own canon of experience. But in what "form" does this canon exist?

Culture and society is transmitted through many forms, from parent to child, religion, literature, art, etc., but Wikipedia seems to be the first major undertaking for uploading the "story" of an entire culture into written form in the way in which society makes it all happen. That is... the people do it, rather than a group of Britannica experts. The people decide what the meaning of "Gettysburg" is today, and as ideas change, so does Wikipedia, whereas Britannica just sits there.

This type of undertaking could only have been done online. We couldn't have done it without the arrival of this unique medium. A independent study by Nature magazine reports that on 42 science-related articles, Wikipedia and Britannica were equally accurate and reliable. Britannica disputed the study.

Do you find it as ironic as I do that this community-oriented medium was banned by the "community-oriented" Chinese government?

I had these thoughts today and decided to post them. Maybe they'll help someone avoid a bad decision.

In sociology, there are two types of groups: primary and secondary. A primary group, such as a family, is a group we belong to as a social end in itself. It fulfills our lifestyle needs. A secondary group is a temporary group we belong to that is goal-oriented. For example, classmates in school may band together for a semester to help each other get good grades, but beyond this goal, there usually isn't much interaction, and when the semester is over, the students usually part ways.

Some MLM companies look for people who are struggling in society and what they do is offer them a primary group. They say things like, "We are the best. We are all you need. Just trust us and you'll be fine." They create a big brother out of the organization, demand allegiance to that organization, then emphasize recruiting. In evaluating an MLM company, I would examine this dynamic. Look to see if the organization is trying to be a primary group or whether it takes a more realistic, secondary-group approach.

Went to buy some new headphones yesterday (the internet phone kind, with the microphone, not the MP3 kind) and saw something interesting.

Regular old black headphones only cost about 10 yuan. But the fancy white ones, made by a manufacturer called Aople, sell for over 50. And yes, I see them around town all the time.

"The mass of people believe their judgments to be their own. They get very offended when it is suggested that they have actually received them ready-made from others and have simply been puppets of popular opinion all their lives. They speak in the current jargon and dress in the latest fashion—not from any personal sense of style but just to fit in. And these servant imitators actually believe they are self-determining? Ridiculous! This is an incurable sickness because people are convinced they are not suffering from it. It is a universal madness because everyone is infected." -Zhuangzi, Chinese scholar, 350-300 BCE

When you go into the bank to do something simple (such as ask the time of day), you have to take a number. Then you sit down in a small room with about 100 people and stare at each other for an hour or two. Sometimes there's a TV on the wall playing reruns of America's best practical jokes of the 50s, 60s, 70, 80s, and 90s (but not today). The Chinese seem to love them -- can't get enough of them -- regardless of how obviously staged each blooper is (crouching actor, hidden camera).

When they finally call your number, you go to a window. After filling out a few lines and boxes on a single form with what seems like 74 carbon copies, the bank teller goes through each and every copy, scribbling lines, doodling Disney animations page by page, and solving for X. Then, the stamping commences. Three little red stamps apiece for all 74 pieces of paperwork amounts to... quite a bit of paperwork. (Apparrently, even in China, working for a bank amounts to blue collar, manual labor.) (You won't see me challenging any of these little-red-stamp-wielding bank tellers to an arm wrestle any time soon, that's for sure.) In the days of Confucius, those who desired good jobs had to pass rigorous public exams. It wouldn't suprise me one bit to learn that today's public service examination involves some sort of stamping test. There's rarely a moment when you don't hear that fun, stampin' sound. If that multi-level stamping company came to China, they'd have a ready-made market of about 231 million bank tellers to sell their products to. It makes me think of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade just thinking about it.

When I look at all that stamping, I think to myself, "Why bother with all this stamping!? I see keyboards. I see monitors. I see printers. Isn't there some way to reduce all this paper work?" Back home in America, the banks seem to have reduced the amount of paperwork to the point where customers feel like something is missing. "Is that all?" customers ask, bewildered. "Are we really finished? Don't you need to fingerprint me? A urine sample, perhaps?"

For the most part, those who've taken a number sit patiently. But even in a land which claims to be community-oriented, there are bound to be some disgruntled customers. In my experience, it's usually the the so-called VIP members who complain the most. They have their own private plexiglass cage at one end of the bank with a special sign on the glass door that says in Chinese, "Bank happily welcome most prestigious VIP members gladly!" or something like that. From time to time, you can see these VIP members through the glass, screaming and yelling, raising a fuss, and bouncing off the padded walls. I don't know enough Chinese yet to know exactly what they are saying, but from what I can of make it, it goes something like, "You miserable slave! Give me what I want or I'll scream! And don't you think I won't!" Today, a woman in the normal section started screaming and fussing like you've never seen anyone scream and fuss in the normal section. She was escorted immediately into the VIP section where her special needs were attended to with most happiness and desirous servicing of excellent nature promptly.

It's moments like these when I see, perhaps, a structural-functional purpose for all those little red stamps. Not allowed to yell back at Very Im Patient members, bank tellers can transmogrify their anger into their right arm and attack the VIP members' 74 forms one by one with those little red stamps. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Smacking the paper most precision with methodical wheras squarley . But moving... as... slow... as... possible....

I saw Sato's Chinese identical twin today. (The fat bad guy from Karate Kid II.) He was riding a bike and smoking. Yes, he had his gray business suit on. Still haven't seen Daniel Larusso, but I know he's here somewhere...

"One morning, a monkey keeper handing out nuts said, 'Three every morning and four every evening.' The monkeys were all enraged. 'All right,' he said. 'Four every morning and three every evening.' The monkeys were all delighted." -Zhuangzi, Chinese philosopher, 300-350 B.C.E.

One day, a woman visited her priest and said, "Father, I have a problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing."

"What's that?" asked the priest.

"They say, 'Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?'"

"That's obscene!" the priest exclaimed. "I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male parrots at home which I have taught to pray and read the Bible. Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we'll put them in the cage with Francis and Peter. My parrots can teach your parrots to praise and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying those nasty words in no time."

"Thank you," the woman responded. "This may very well be the solution."

The next day, the woman brought her female parrots to the priest's house. As he ushered her in, she saw two parrots inside a cage perched over a bible, clutching rosary beads and praying.

Impressed, she walked over to the cage and placed her parrots inside. The female parrots cried out, "Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?"

There was stunned silence. Shocked, one male parrot looked over at the other male parrot and exclaimed, "Put the beads away, Frank. Our prayers have been answered!"