Weiqi titles

I've found a few titles on Weiqi, but they are mostly in Chinese. Nevertheless, I'm going to list them so that I might come back to them someday and discuss them in more depth:

Wang Runan et al., Xuanxuan qijing xinjie. Beijing: Renmin tiyu chubanshe, 1988.

Cheng Enyuan, Dunhuang qijing jianzheng (The Dunhuang Classic of Weiqi with Notes), Chengdu: Shurong qiyi chubanshe, 1990.

I also found the following article online, but I haven't read it yet:

Paolo Zanon, "Qijing Shisanpian (The Classic of Weiqi in Thirteen Chapters) Its History and Translation."

The Way to Go

Finally, in an effort to combine my free time activities and the work I am supposed to be about, I will try to start regular posts on my attempt to learn the game of Go, otherwise known as "Weiqi" in Chinese (thanks to Manconeuro for the suggestion!). At the same time, I will search high and low in the academic scholarship to find out what more we can learn about Weiqi's place in traditional Chinese culture and literature. So this will be both blog and bibliography.

While I look for appropriate articles, here is site that looks good for learning the basics of the game: The Interactive Way to Go. Enjoy!

The Story of Stuff

This is a great short that explains the true, yet hidden, costs of consumption.  If only everyone would see this movie...

The Story of Stuff: Chp. 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5 

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

The Story of Stuff

American media/politics: Good or Ugly?

I watched the primary election results come in from Pennsylvania primary today. It started me thinking about the amount of time all the mainstream media are spending on primary election coverage in the US. I find it problematic that so much media time is spent covering presidential election politics. Given the limited time and space that the media has to present any kind of information, I really wonder at the fairness of covering the election campaigns to such a degree. The American mainstream, in any regular news cycle, devotes only a small fraction of its already limited coverage to such problems as the world food crisis, global warming and environmental issues and other concerns of global proportions. This results in a representation of America as a country more concerned with the trivial aspects of its own provincial politics than of problems that affect the world.

It must be said that media coverage gets people excited, and getting excited about political campaigns, especially presidential ones, can motivate people to get more involved in the political process. This is certainly a good thing. But unless we take the step to do something after the campaigns and the coverage are over (run for office ourselves, organize community members around an issue, educate others about real problems and suggest solutions), we have let the media control how and when we take responsibility for our civic participation.

The Urban Homestead

I've been thinking a lot lately about what amounts to "urban homesteading." Apparently quite a few people are doing it: combining the activities of the farm (gardening, raising poultry, reclaiming greywater, etc.) and life in the city. I like the idea of making good use of the space, of growing my own food, of paying new attention to mundane activities. Hopefully when I move this summer I can start to create my own urban homestead, even if I'm living in an apartment.

Urban homesteading in LA

Breaching Milltown Dam

Speaking of water, they finally breached the Milltown Dam a couple of weeks ago. It's been a long time coming. I actually read in the paper that the first fish (or at least the first fish that they've tracked), made its way upstream past the dam for the first time in 100 years. While the clean-up of the Superfund site isn't finished, it's been exciting to see the rivers run freely again.

You can see a video of the breaching:

Presidential contenders

The two candidates left in the race to represent the US Democratic Party in the upcoming presidential election, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both made appearances in Missoula, MT this past weekend. Montana's primary election will be held on June 3, the last one to be held before the Democratic party convention. Since the race is still close, even the few delegates Montana has to send to the Convention may be at stake. If so, it would be a rare chance for Montana to make a difference in a national political contest.

Both candidates are excellent speakers, and come across much more favorably than they do on TV. Because their messages aren't chopped up into 30 second sound bites, you actually get to hear the rationale they have behind their positions and to get a sense of how they think about problems. The way the media portrays these candidates I think is both helpful and harmful. You may get more information than you did if the media didn't exist, but at the same time the way the media construct the view of events or people often times distorts who or what they really are. In political contests, I now think that it is really important to find out in person about the candidates if only to give yourself another perspective and to get closer to the truth.

Afternoon cat

She's not doing anything interesting in this video. Not that she does anything interesting most of the time. But at least she's not sleeping.