So what now you have more jobs

Americans cherish the appreciation of Chinese Yuan on the edge of recovering from that long nightmare of economic depression, no mistake, it has been a depression, not recession. Fancy word makes no difference. Scapegoat in views of economists and commentators turned all at once to be China's undervalued currency, a deformed strange financial creature unleashed by the long being hated cunning Fu Manchu, a true enemy under its uncanny mask- can there be anything worse than that done by commies?

Economics cannot belie its own fervent ideology, but common sense calculation and prediction for economists always turn to be common sense ridicule for people buried by real world relationship and interaction. Dissent within discipline Amartya Sen once made it straight: "Economics is ultimately not about commodities, but the lives human beings can lead". People in their life-world don't usually see even practical manifest of those rational choices and price curves, what matters is power. Money has no value apart from its power to engage in social interaction, and the latter is the true carrier of any economic means.

Rethinking dollar's depreciation then is put under another scope. While I am sitting here sipping a cup of chocolate worth as little as 2.69, the price is unimaginable back 20 years in my childhood, when my weekly pocket money is that of the equivalent of contemporary 15 cents. Americans make less as well back 20 years, but no one would doubt the purchasing power of that time is too far from being equal between two giant countries. At the time of Yuan's depreciation, the route of production and consumption is almost fixed in aspects of life, China enjoyed the growth, U.S enjoyed the commodity. There are just too many descriptions about the good(bad) old days, mine will only add redundancy onto redundancy.

From 2010, trend started to reverse, with China initially taking action to lower Yuan's value against Dollar. Now it is close to 6:1 as compared to 8:1 of two years ago. Cheers? Now more job will be available in States isn't it?

But the fact is people don't get better life just because of jobs. It's more about power, as defined by Max Weber: "the ability of an actor to realize his or her will in a social action, even against the will of other actors". People consume with the surplus consuming power apart from basic need consumption, by and large this includes conspicuous consumption, secondary consumption. Undervalued dollar assures more jobs, and assures more foreign consuming power over U.S labor and resources. What I meant by the real world relationship and interaction is the common perception of this changed power. With more low value money from the newly created jobs, producers become less capable to afford consumption from their appreciated buyers, the distribution of surplus power can therefore only flows to domestic population instead of the dreamlike cheap tourism resorts in the past. In sex trafficking sector, an obvious consequence of the unequal distribution of power is the uni-direction of woman flow. No more cheap shining skin Asian chicks now, the more low value money created by your new jobs will enable you to find suppressed dis-powered women in domestic market, but don't dream about foreign markets. This can go further to see the women from the less power side swarm to powered side to provide labor directly. Italy for France, Southest Asian for East Asian, China for U.S all witnessed how producers can earn power by accumulating money but have to undergo the pain of dispower by offering human labors including sex labor to the consumers. The bottom line logic is: the unequal distribution of interpersonal power is reflected by consuming power; apart from basic need, people exert power to consume others only on their surplus power; consumption based on surplus power is dispensable and production of commodities for surplus power is less dispensable because although surplus consumption can be avoided, production is by definition for power/money, which is indispensable. Thus created the unequal power distribution in social interaction.

What does an honest outsider have to say to the victim in Mumbai Blast.

The annoying and discomforting ways that I nevertheless employ to assure people of the fake anger and dangers:

Last year, when couple of Hongkong tourists were kept hostage and a few were killed by a Philipine guy, the entire country of Chinese was fueled up with anger towards the "south sea barbarians", as well as the always dissatisfying China commie government. The situation of now Mumbai is different: the perpetrators are more ideological, consequences are more serious so that the degree of how much of what I say may apply to you is varying. But in that similar case of Chinese hostage, while others bemoan and anger, I see more irrealistics: 1, the sense of community, the feeling as if ourselves have been put into torment is unreal; 2, new risks, non-traditional disasters, including the most manifested one-terrorism attack, are not any more harmful than traditional disasters except it robs you of your stereotypical cognition.

That 1st thing I said is rather annoying to most people that I risk the shame of being traitor to my folks. What I have to say is: why it makes people tend to others like real brothers when they actually, in everyday real life, quarrel and fight with each other over triviality; bargain and curse each over things came between them; push and step on others in crowded metro; backstab the colleagues sit right next to you in office?

2. Terrorist attack brings very little, if not negligible, amount of casualty than regular road accident, endemics, homicide, domestic violence, infanticide, suicide, all of which came from no alien source of terror but our own sectors of society. Terrorism is terrible only because of our inability to locate and identify, our general incapacity to bring it before our cognitive judgment and judge it according to our own ways of recognizing things; for us it is everywhere but it's in fact nowhere. It is the big Other, the primordial darkness that threatens the young kid with cognitive dysfunction rather than much physical harm. Our fear is unreal.

The anger and fear goes away in next few weeks, things are getting back, everything remains no change.

All that above, is true before you have your own concerned people involved in this tragedy. If you have, I'm sorry for what had happened, please act up and do something real. That's whole lot different: sense of community is not fake.

污水变甜，这苍冷的六月

污水变甜，在寒冷的夏天

死鱼复活，烂木发芽

沼泽漫上了道路，腥臭味盖过鲜花。

不是没有美丽的人间——

依旧大腿、鲜花、短裙、笑骂；

败坏的气息不经意四散

随着铁甲碾过尸体——

没有爱情能自保，

没有友谊该庆贺，

没有亲人在相聚。

On the earth.

Stand, walk, stroll over the earth,

stretch out fingers, grasp the necklace with a catholic cross

stretching out to destiny

as a human being,

who stands, walks and rest upon the earth,

pierced by woodwind, autumn sun, the howl from the far night.

Why people debate over university rankings

It's not without controversial every time when an institution publishes its own version of world university ranking, some look basically similar with others, some don't, some shock. There are some rankings that differ great a lot from others, but people don't feel earthquake because these rankings have their distinct dimension and aim. Exampli Gratia, the ranking published by Washington Montly College Guide Website, in which UCSD received incredible high position(2nd), has its own philosophy in thinking about what is the definition of a good college. It emphasized the career opportunity for "ordinary" undergrads (not everyone goes to Wallstreet right?). Ignorant people get angry on this kind of ranking since their own schools were not in. But a look into methodology and philosophy tells you to calm down. You don't demand steak tastes like kebab right?

Among the ones that often shock people, the first come to mind might be TIMES Higher Education. Why people give noise over it? Why there is a curse between a few proponents and massive opponents of Times ranking? The simple storyline is this ranking disturbs. US schools are generally ranked lower than British and European than they are often anticipated to be. A few Chinese universities rise to even within top50, a phenomenal accident unacceptable by two categories of people: the number of people who were motivated by jealousy may not be minor, but a more convincing and determinative reason might be the prevalent disbelief of any official institution(note that normally universities and colleges in China are state-owned) among Chinese people. A possibly false Lay belief that powerful economy brings powerful education also stimulated resistance to Times ranking because people believe US education shouldn't be worse than that of UK. This is the social layer of the distrust of Times ranking.

I don't by all means want to say Times cheats on ranking. But its biggest failure is not having brought their methodology to front. They do have a concrete and somewhat detailed methodology of the ranking, but their effort of trying to interpret their method before letting people read their ranking is at best weak. The same name has different content. Though they are all called automobile, you have to distinguish truck from car, van from coupe before any honest intention to purchase. In science and engineering, it's easier but by no means effortless to clarify the definition of a conception that has been commonly but mistakenly accepted by the mass. For long until now, petites bourgoises wishfully deem Schroedinger's cat to be so revolutionary and "postmodern"(sick to this word) that Schroedinger himself would be terrified to accept the halo. Physicists can show how much Schroedinger's theory is linked to classical boring physics, which immediately loses taste in the sight of petites bourgeoise. But a Fait Social requires more effort to show people what its definition and real content is. A University Ranking of what? Noticing the tremendously different emphasis between Times, ARSW and USNews, there should be no debating about which is accurate. Times included 30% weight of Teaching Environment in its method, including subdimensions such as teaching reputation survey, Phd/Bachelor ratio, Phd awards number, undergrads admitted, income. This does not only measure the teaching capacity(and still surveyed among subjects about reputation) instead of research motivation of a school, it also permit the impact of the school scale. The bigger, the richer, the better. You have enormous grads and undergrads, you win. I am of course not at all depressed seeing my undergrad school ranked top200, and other bunch of Chinese schools are there too. But you must want to consider how BIG are Chinese universities, especially when higher education is an industrialized section in a country with 1.4 billion more people. Income shan't become a center of dispute but there is still much difference from how you measure research. Funding obtain is part of research, but not necessary, plus, you might also want to know how much money Chinese government invest wastefully into universities, but let me restrain from talking about the academic corruption.

Compared to other rankings that almost omit teaching, scale, and income, Times ranking is more biased towards rich, populous, and big universities. Times ranking is at least a good index for undergrads who seek awesome environment, but not that much for grads. The debate over rankings, is meaningless as Wittgenstein said: there is no philosophical problem without the daily and gamely misuse of language. There shan't be a ranking dispute, were you ever read their ranking methodology.

A review of Dru Gladney's Dislocating China

Questioning Huntington, Gladney cited several Hui folklore of genesis to demonstrate its syncretism with Han culture.p108 the Structuralism characteristic of Han-Hui coexistence: "Most Han ancestral halls have covered corridors...the absence of corridors is the one feature that differentiates their hall from most other Han lineage halls"p115. Most Hui in south never practice Islam, but they practice ancestor worship, but they never offer pork to ancestor. Han misunderstand pork taboo, take pig as Hui's ancestor, is not total ignorance, pork has actually become the symbolic distinction of Hui. "She minority illustrate their belief that they are descended from the union of a dog and human. Many of their ritual garments contain totemic representations of the dog. this is also present among many southeast Asian groups including Yao. It is not surprising that many such ethnic stories thought derisive and offensive to Hui ancestry should originate in this area"p116

"It is now popular to be Canonese and Shanghainese in China, and a resurgence of local power-bases, often drawn along cultural fault lines, should give Huntington pause: not only was he wrong about Muslim homogeneity, but he is misinformed about Confucian continuity as well"p117. "A final story(eat Hui food, no need to listen to Hui words) reminds us that Hui and other minority communities can exist for centries without being taken seriously by the state that rules them or the scholars who study them"p118

Gonbei and Sufi: "Instead the consideration of whether the Hui are really Muslim or merely inheritors of a cultural tradition. I propose to examine one important area of interest to Hui communities. Of critical importance to Hui are the lore and events surrounding various tombs and shrines in many communities. The activities and discourse surrounding these tombs reveal much about current Hui concerns and identity in China."p121 Gonbei is to trace common lineage and their orthodox as descend of foreign Muslim. "the tombs are meaningful because they concretely demonstrate the genealogical bond between these Hui communities and their foreign ancestors, validating their claim to ethnic minority...Assurance of the authority of their Sufi order is critical to their identity as Hui Muslims who see themselves as descended from a decidedly Islamic heritage"p147. However, similarity with Han graves are also salient: fengshui concern, the fortune bringing function of the tombs. Gonbei in Sufi order functions as symbolizatio of hierarchy. Symbolize the lieanage from Muhammod to local ahong. "if one cannot obtain favor through Quranic learning, one can always attempt to use the backdoor by patronizing a local saint's tomb"p146.

Seems like questioning the rigidity of nation is quite popular today. Gladney has intellectually inherited Appadurai and Prasenjit. He argues, identity is relational, as Evans-Pritchard did in Nuer. "When A and B encounter a higher level of opposition, D, they form C, moving a node up the scale to form higher-level relations...while this scheme is binary, it's always constructed in a field of social relation, depending on their interaction with D...these alterior relations are best perceived as dialogical rather than dialectical(means there isn't certain direction)"p190. Hui from different places are different, but they could form an alliance when Han comes, but they can also ally with Han agains other Hui. "For the Hui, a gneralized notion of descent from foreign muslim ancestors is importatn for contemporary identity. For Khazak, nomadism is a distant memory they look in ethnic nostalgia, despite pastrolism passed away in middle asia and altered form in China.p198 For the Uyghur, knowledge of genealogy seems to be important only as it relates to the land."p199 "Without Russian and US threat to China's sovereignty, lower identities may increasingly come into play, evidenced by increasing southern nationalism"p202. "Hui hybridity argues, there is no pure nation, ethnicity, or race that can claim state power on that basis alone"p203. At last, Gladney cited Zhuangzi from Heaven and Earth lecture: "if there is no other then we do not have a self, if there is no self, then we do not have anything to grasp". 

The vanity of dialogue

Traditional wisdom in academia ever from the onset of Greek philosophers' emphasis on logos to Habermasian advocacy of communicative rationality, all have a commonality that distinguishes Athens from Jerusalem: dialogue. The essential reason that logos has been enchanted throughout Western intellectual tradition is how it could be transformed into the basic configuration of disciplines. Linguistically evident to see that the root "logos" constitutes the very fixation of the words that make ordinary activities into institutional discipline: biology, geology, sociology, anthropology, meteorology etc. I have realized the uncanny way in which rationality must be achieved through spoken words-logos, because 1) Greek grammar is rigorously composed by the structure that defines the modality of ancient form of logic; 2) all ideas that are accessible intellectually must be comprehended grammatically, i.e. through the construction of logos. Derrida had belabored elaborately on the same topic by another approach.

But within recent 2 or 3 years I have found hard time reading philosophical working (not necessarily philosophy in institutional definition, philosophy department in American universities deals with boring topics after all). Other than analytical philosophy, major body of continental working relies on assumptions that are not immediately accessible to laymen without reference to encyclopedia. During the process of trying referring to a single clear definition of the notion mentioned, more undefined notions come to untrained mind, the confusion is growing exponentially. Even if the audience is the disciplined subjects, it's very hard to differentiate whether the understanding of context comes from the habitual, disciplined and ingrained comprehension of semantic meaning that presents to them in the way not dissimilar to that the vulgar words appear to lay mind, or, the professional words are comprehended in the mechanical procedure as if brain is operating autotranslation with reference to the terminal dictionary of natural language. Both seemed contrary to ordinary perception, theoretical refutation to both is also not wanting. But the problem is not whether the storage of refutation is big enough to slap back on enemy's face. The problem is serious, the ground of reason to justify is not stable, far less than stable, is trembling once your eyes are open.

What is not justifiable? This very question came in minds first since Nietzsche refused intellegensia but asked for will. In The Use and Abuse of History for Life, the caricature was cast to academia, which teaches people to immerse in contradictory opinions and try to understand each of them for reason's sake. Wasn't this the progenitor of nihilism, which despises and distastes everything after seemingly understanding them by reciting the vague definitions and theorem? In social psychology, Festinger initiated a notion called self-exempting belief. This theory has been applied to vast area of life including most famously smoking, deviant behavior, health etc. It's not uncommon to find academic reports point out ostensible exemptions given by the deviants, who are in turn defined in reference to structural exemptions, are frequently based on complicate and delicate cultural contents, from Buddhism teaching of violence to anarchism. It could be argued that their deliberate linking of idea to action lacks some fundamental bridging part in reasoning. But who is not? From Plato to Hegel, which is free from the slip of a second when applying theory to reality, transferring his text from one level to another, transforming a basic linguistic morph to another word? In Qu'est ce que le parle dire, Bourdieu had mistook Heidegger's concoct of the word Fursorge. It may not be caused by Heidegger's aspiration to ascend his position in the web of language capital, it could all the way introduce a trap for us all: the constant loosing of meaning during écreture, as same as the eternal regression of language. It's not incredible, then, to find everything are justifiable in theory and understandable in moral judgment: as long as you identify with the speaker's volition every time when rupture occurs right between two level of text, two dimension of intentional expression, two area of application etc.

"Sola fide, ego liberta". This will not be took as gullible, this is the stroke to Gordian knot.

the Modern Godess? Shhhhh...Just worship it!

商鸠陀-笈多关于卡利女神的家庭化的文章中，有一句话讲：“为了杀死鬼王巽婆、尼巽婆和他们的恶魔兵将，女神帕瓦蒂散发变成一个极美的美人形象，名叫母神唵吡咖，又称考湿齐。仿佛耗尽了一切可能的女性美感一样，帕瓦蒂突然变为一个黑色、恐怖的形象，仿佛是末日的黑夜一般。”（Sanjukta Gupta, p65）。

我想，什么样的特征才是一切正面的女性美感呢？那个胸部、屁股极大的Willendolf的维纳斯是否在特征上呈现出了理想的、非经验的美的概念？过去见到的这个考古发掘品时，只有一点猎奇心态。今天，我愈加发现，Willendolf的维纳斯，如此之美，并且是一种脱俗的理念之美——她“仿佛耗尽了一切可能的女性美感”，因此突然变成一个恐怖的形象。

willendolf的维纳斯如果表现的是一种非经验、pure characteristic的女性美丽特征。退一步说，Willendolf的维纳斯至少是试图摆脱社会经验的纯粹美丽特征，虽然这种试图未必成功。相比之下，Wangechi Mutu的《现代女神》则是一个在纯粹社会学范畴内体现的美丽女性的历史性产物——现代美丽的纯粹特征：

吃草

我饿极了，要吃草

在阳光奔跑的八月

要吃水嫩的，长长的，大把大把的青草

在宁静的水边，我们放下身躯

这个大地已经酒醉的八月

疯狂地啃噬着青草

à fleurs du mal

Qu'est ce que le réel dans, par exempler Baudelair, tous sortes des discourses? Ces sont parfois une instance des événements directement? En tous cas, réel n'arriverais pas que quand nous cessons d'être poser une stance de spectacle sur les mondes, et oublier toutfois, entirement la pense vers l'événement.

Mais, encore, à quoi et pourquoi je sense le tendue de nerfs quand certaines choses ou individues passant à travers mon avis? Les sens biologique sont désormais dominant? Mais, n'a-t-il, Baudelair ici, dépendent étroitement sur une autre imagination quand il prend l'avis de voyageur?

l'âme d'un vieux poete erre dans la gouttière, avec la triste voix d'un fantôme frileux.