Drinking In China, Again

Drinking beer? Openly? On the street?! With no paper bag?! No guilt, paranoid glances?! Gasp! Think of the children!

At least there's one country that treats me like an adult. Even communist China begrudges me the simple pleasure of relaxing with a cold bottle of beer (few drinks in China come cold, so here cold beer is an especially lovely treat), so why the fuck doesn't the U.S.?

(Of course, in China, the internet is not free. No, not like that.)

Black Coffee Makes You Cool, Right?

You think you're a badass 'cuz you get your coffee "black"? Try putting 1.8 grams of instant coffee mix on your tongue and swallowing with a gulp of water. Yeah, that's what I thought. Sure does work, though...

Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant?

No, it's not. You try leaving meat out in the sun. It attracts flies, of course.

Pure ethanol works much better.

Heh. I'll be here all night, folks.

Homosexuality and Male Superiority

If you think that homosexuality is morally justified by the widespread existence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, you should also think that male domination of women is justified by natural mammalian male social and political superiority. The idea that the "male power structure" among humans is somehow socially constructed is dealt a death blow by the same argument that animates discussions of the immutability of homosexuality. (In fact, having watched my fair share of BBC documentaries, I can tell you homosexuality is far less common in the wild than male domination, despite the fact that this piss-poor Wikipedia article has been cleansed of the term "alpha male" and remains pitifully undeveloped. Compare it with Wikipedia's extensive and well-documented article on homosexuality in animals, and you have a pretty clear example of bias.) The answer is that the existence of homosexuality and male superiority among animals means only one thing: the eradication of these behaviors among present-day humans is impossible. But morally speaking, these facts are simply not relevant.

Well, not if your morals are to follow nature. And even if they are to maximize happiness, it's possible that many women are equally happy under male "domination" as under liberation (see here). I think the best case can be made for the following proposition: Women should be free to select for themselves family life or working life, because though most women probably find the former more fulfilling (in the absence of truly societally constructed "feminist" opinions, that is), many do not, and they should have the opportunity to compete as men can. Women should not be subjected to societal pressure to choose either path.

The same applies equally to homosexuality.

China Is Fast

(For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm currently living in Beijing, China. I will be here for at least a year. I'm sorry I haven't been able to write much of anything lately; Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, and often Google are blocked here.)

(This is also posted here.)

It’s a little hard to describe the overwhelming speed and efficiency of this country. I’ve been here for a mere three weeks, and I’ve already come to realize that much of the culture shock – which exists, make no mistake – has to do with the simplicity and timeliness you encounter in daily interactions. Your building’s janitor will fix your room’s problem not only in less than five minutes, but more importantly, within five minutes of when you hail him. The cafeteria lady will serve your food and have the price on the screen almost before you order. And your teachers will have your homework, tests, and other assignments graded and corrected before you leave class. There is none of this indulgent nonsense we put up with in the United States – women doing hard manual labor? Under a week to get your room fixed? Goods served quickly? Shocking, really.

(Nor is this an observation restricted to the Chinese in this country. I have noticed similar tendencies in overseas Chinese in the United States, especially among University of Chicago Chinese teachers, who have the habit of grading all the assignments of everyone in the class in one night and returning them all the following day.)

Walking and bicycling* are things the Chinese love to do, and they can because most places are well within walking distance. (“Walkable communities” is a novel idea in the United States, but in China it is fulfilled. Down with zoning laws!) Everything is extremely convenient; I think because of the incredible density**, the Chinese are forced to maximize efficiency, and it shows. There is no "fast food" in China, because every restaurant beats McDonald's when it comes to speed. The Chinese can't afford to wait. There is no time to be lazy.

*This includes things like three-wheeled motorized pickup scooters, odd contraptions the Chinese seem to be fond of. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet.
**On some nights, every inch of Beijing is packed with men, women, and children. It’s striking, because even in New York (to say nothing of Chicago), once you leave Times Square, everything gets dark and deserted. How odd it is to see little kids playing in a public square at ten o’clock.

A Couplet

The throes of ecstasy in which conceived,
Unto me grant a rather long reprieve.

Twitter Is Not The Future Of News

Partially crossposted here.

Isn’t anyone else a little skeptical? Can anyone point to a demonstrable instance where Twitter proved superior to CNN in breadth, timeliness, and accuracy of coverage? It takes you what, 5 seconds to go to CNN.com and see what’s up? Twitter? I don’t know; there are maybe three actual Iranians who’ve posted about this (Twitter’s blocked there, no?), and probably only two of them substantially and/or in English. The resulting noise makes it impossible to find what you want without spending hours on Twitter. It’s simply not efficient.

The problem with Twitter I found was that the more people became interested the higher the noise to signal ratio, which made following something like #IranElection rather frustrating, though still interesting. So, while Twitter is a great input device, there is noise, possibly incorrect/misleading tweets, and so cross checking and all that great journalistic stuff still needs to be done…. which some news outlets (like ABC) seem to be doing better and more quickly than CNN at this point

.Add to that innumerable language barriers, the fact that in many places of interest hardly anyone uses the internet (they’re still working up to CNN, guys), and the reluctance of the average Joe to invest time in reporting original news*, and you have reason to be extremely suspicious of claims that a proprietary blogging platform each of whose posts can be no longer than 140 characters is the future of news.

Remember how it used to be that blogs were the future of media? That posts written by average people on the ground would create a web of news and content that would replace traditional news? Hasn’t happened. In fact, for a trend so supposedly irreversible, one might reasonably expect at least a partial takeover of media, especially after 5 freaking years of blogging. Sure, you have lots of great opinion and analysis, but basically no original reporting unconnected with large organizations. These ridiculous, masturbatory “citizen journalism” fantasies aren’t reality in even the United States; how can we expect otherwise for Iran?

Now, maybe Twitter-like** news services are the future. If so, the following substantial requirements must be met:

1. Everyone must have a phone with constant internet access and picture and video capabilities.
2. Everyone must be eager to post to a server somewhere when something eventful happens.
3. Everyone must be around everyone; that is, the population must be dense enough that a car crash, for example, will be noticed immediately.

Once these are realized, we can begin to talk seriously about Twitter as the future of news. But nowhere on earth do they all currently obtain. Most countries don't even have step 1 met yet, and those that do, like Japan, don't have populations that meet 2. It is unclear whether 2 and 3 will ever apply anywhere. But even if they will, I still doubt Twitter-like news services will be able to replace traditional ones. What are today's important stories? They consist mostly of political analysis, not the reporting of events. Twitter may someday be used successfully to report, say, car accidents***, but North Korean provocations? I have my doubts. At this point, it's a safe bet that such predictions as these are little more than furious circle jerking around an object of some, but not unlimited, promise.

*Wikipedia is the counter-example. But Wikinews, the more accurate comparison, has gone absolutely nowhere. It seems there is a limit to our willingness to contribute free content, and that limit is on-the-ground, original reporting.
**Twitter is just a proprietary network of servers -- it is the concept that's valuable.
***Even these, though -- original reporting of even small events is hard to come by. Old News dominates here too.