I have never lived in a house with a television. I do not read newspapers. At most, I glance at the headlines on Yahoo or the International Herald Tribune.

People say, You are out of touch. Then they bury their heads in the newspapers as they ride the subway to read all about overgrown, overpaid, undereducated athletes far, far away, too busy to notice the people around them. People say, You are out of touch, as they put on their headphones to drown out the sounds of the world around them.

Hikers revel in paying top dollar for the most expensive (read: prestigious) hiking boots they can find. I still wear the footwear my parents gave me at birth. Any moment in the mountains, I can shut my eyes and describe in detail the texture, temperature, and feel of the ground I stand on.

It’s a miracle I ever get any work done. Here’s a photo Sabiy took of me a couple weeks ago when I was cleaning up after a typhoon. A large limb had crashed down on the path out back, so I was trying to chop it up to drag away. My dogs showed their solidarity with me by milling around me while I was trying to swing my headhunting knife. As if that wasn’t enough, the neighbor’s Andy came over and promptly sat on my feet.

一般說「仙」如何？「不食人間煙火。」仙是如此，若能修到成神，可想而知，必然對人間飲食不感興趣。人家口中「美食」，于祂如糞土。

這幾天月圓，佛家行盂蘭盆，民間說中元普渡是也。看到有人拜啤酒，很不以為然：酒肉，于正神如尿屎，躲都來不及，別想要祂們靠近；拜酒拜動物屍體，招徠的不善。

有人說要請好兄弟喫喝。第一，無形眾生應該用正法渡；拜酒肉乃教他們留在鬼道繼續受苦，他會感激嗎？第二，拜酒拜肉，好兄弟來，于我，我雖然不排斥鬼神道的朋友，可是寧與佛菩薩、羅漢、正神打交道。你要找人幫你看家，你要十個正直警察來呢？或者一個頑劣流氓？拜酒拜肉，等于趕走警察引賊入室。

The moon wiggled, not me.

we had an eclipse tonight, and this is the photo that came out of my rock-steady camera brace.

Recently I read a series of articles about achieving inner peace. The methods included having a massage, going jogging, listening to soft music, eating pizza with strawberry ice cream. You have to make allowances, because this was an article in the New York Times, and dog knows there is precious little inner peace to be found in New York, but it struck me that all the ideas in the article involved putting your mind at rest or taking a break, but I’m not sure if those are really inner peace.

Inner peace means that your mind is free of contradictions, conflicts, and disharmony. Inner peace is not something you achieve in five minutes by eating some special food or hearing some musical notes. You have to untie the knots and straighten out the kinks. It’s a monumental task with pain, struggle, and industry, real blood, sweat, and tears. Approaching inner peace requires you be brutally honest with yourself, something humanity in general, Americans in particular, and New Yorkers in extremity, are loath to do.

But you won’t sell many magazines by saying so.

教育，國之本；國家興衰、社會成敗、家庭和舛，關鍵在于教育。

教育是百年大業，所以在部長杜正勝教授英明領導下，教育部把大學院校經費刪減了，叫各個學校行政單位不要花心思去想如何將下一代的主人翁教育成優秀國民，而要想盡辦法撈錢。這麼先進的理念，一般人是不容易理解的。

北藝大的空降部隊新校長朱宗慶先生遇到此棘手問題，一點也不畏縮，反而勇敢地伸出雙手，跟校友要錢。上行下效，朱校長虛懷若谷，誠摯學習陳總統的模樣，舉辦「募款餐會」，這是令人多麼欣慰的決策！

參加「募款餐會」的校友，每位規定樂捐兩千五百元；因為怕校友錯失良機，所以各科系的教授一一打電話要請校友把錢吐出來。盛會通知太重要，不容助教替教授聯絡。

每一科系規定要認幾桌，大致以該系學生校友多寡而定。可是各位讀者要了解，再「換人做做看」的執政黨領導下，教育單位非常懂得斟酌，靈活因財施壓。電影系，在北藝大人數不多，卻被迫認二十桌。該系人士矇瞽不明，抱怨沒那麼多人，認不了那許多桌，領導人員指出正確的方向，回：你們電影系的人一定認識很多影劇圈的人，他們都很有錢，叫他們來就好了。

聽到這番事，筆者眼淚雙行，感動的不得了，眼界這麼廣、思緒這麼睿智的人負責臺灣教育大事…… 臺灣完蛋了。

East and West, I

A generalization: the West analyzes, breaking things up into specialties. China looks for common ground, 找關係.

Westerners eat with knife and fork; a knife cannot perform the duty of a fork, and vice versa. Chinese eat with chopsticks, which are interchangeable.

East and West, II

Now Taiwan is paved, so people convey heavy loads on pushcarts. Using a pushcart assumes flat, even surfaces. Thirty years ago, the 扁擔 / shoulder pole was still ubiquitous in Taiwan, because you can carry one anywhere your feet will carry you.

Way back then, an American friend in Taipei watched a man carrying two heavy bags of rice on his bamboo shoulder pole, and turned to me with a sigh. He said, “I’ll never figure the Chinese out. They carry one hundred pounds of rice with one piece of bamboo, and a mouthful of rice with two pieces of bamboo.”

On the escalators at Taipei’s subway stops, stand right walk left; if you don’t walk up or down the escalator, stand to the right and leave the left side open for those walking.

As I walked up the escalators in Taipei Main Station, pair by pair of high tech sports shoes hove into view on the right. I was struck by the way people nowadays spend handfuls of money to buy elaborately designed sports shoes, for the purpose of standing on an escalator as it carries you along.

People of our day are certainly the least active in the history of humanity. For thousands of generations, our ancestors walked everywhere they went; eventually some could afford the luxury of riding horseback, but even that is hard exercise. Our ancestors achieved everything through bodily might; now we rely exclusively on machines. We are too quiescent to even walk down an escalator. But never before in the history of humanity has so much attention, research, or energy been devoted to the making of shoes for athletic pursuits.

So you can stand there motionless.

But hey! it looks athletic! Like the four wheel drives people drive around the city.

誰牽誰，我看不出來；狗鍊一頭是黃金獵犬，另一頭是穿著入時的二十幾歲小姐，手上拿了一個小畚斗。狗蹲作痾勢，小姐趕緊在犬臀後屈膝把畚斗放狗屁下，謹承屎寶。

看到斯景，想起儒林外史第十六回，常久流亡在外的匡二相公，終于回到家，父親久臥病牀，兒子細心照顧；匡二相公，字超人。書上說：

太公道：「我要出恭，快喊你娘進來。」母親忙走進來，正要替太公墊布；匡超人道，「爹要出恭，不要這樣出了；象這布墊在被窩裏，出的也不自在。況每日要洗這布，娘也怕薰的慌，不要薰傷了胃氣。」

太公道，「我站的起來出恭倒好了；這也沒奈何。」

匡超人道，「不要站起來，我有道理。」連忙走到廚下端了一個瓦盆，盛上一瓦盆的灰，拏進去放在牀面前，就端了一條板櫈，放在瓦盆外邊；自己扒上牀，把太公扶了橫過來，兩隻腳放在板櫈上，屁股緊對著瓦盆的灰。他自己鑽在中間，雙膝跪下，把太公兩條腿，捧著肩上，讓太公睡的安安穩穩，自在出過恭。

時髦姑娘注重衛生，固然是功德。愛護禽獸、養育寵物、維護衛生，都極好。可是我總準此繩墨：愛獸不得愈愛親。

古人孝父母之心，今人孝狗，有過之。

The latest spam scam is a pitiful call for money. It says

I have been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months to live, according to medical experts.

Yes, I believe all forms of medical treatment have been defiled.

We spent our Saturday getting clobbered by Typhoon Sepat/聖帕. Trees broke and bamboo snapped. Four sheets of metal came flying in from some unknown location uphill to enliven our day. I really wish The Authorities would give typhoons soft, gentle names, like Lamb or Bambi. Last time they named one 象神 Elephant King, and it trampled us.

Photos by Sabiy/超.

Behu sent a postcard from Vancouver. Somewhere in British Columbia he encountered a Taiwanese man running a teashop, and reports he seemed “alone.”

What a torment for a delicate tea soul! I can imagine the poor wretch suffering day by day until finally he descends into a perpetual dusk shrieking, gibbering, and muttering the same mortal formula over and over again: “No sugar! No milk! No lemon in tea! No! No! No sugar in tea, No sugar in tea, no no no sugar in tea tea teaeeeeeeeeeeewoooooo no milk in teahehehehehehe!”

What demon planted in his ill-fated brain the suicidal wish to open a teashop in a land with close ties to England and the US? Poor man.

Did you see the headline?

Rove to leave White House Aug. 31

I think that proves the old saying that rats desert a sinking ship.

I wrote this in 2001.

It could be worse

Some baby-boomers are mortified by memories (or even worse, photos) of their behavior in the 70s: platform shoes and disco. But it could be worse. What if you were Chinese? If you have memories of the People’s Republic in the 70s, you were not one of the millions wiped out during the Cultural Revolution. So you did the right things: you waved the Sayings of Chairman Mao ¾ the Little Red Book ¾ with inane enthusiasm as you competed in singing the Great Helmsman’s praises. When you were not taking potshots at other Red Guard factions, you would prove your utter devotion by reciting from memory Mao’s quotes backwards, lickety-split. After you had denounced your elders for some trifling misstep, you would ecstatically swoon at the sight of an Old Peasant ¾ Mao’s repository of all wisdom (never mind that the Old Peasant pined for the KMT, and the days before the Saving Star of Humanity starved 30 million peasants to death out of spite). Every time you blew your week’s pay on a Big Mac for your son, you would be haunted by recollections of screaming in unison, WE WILL GIVE THE RUNNING DOGS OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM A RESOUNDING SLAP IN THE FACE!! You would cringe at the memories of moldy oldies, like “Daddy’s Affection, Mommy’s Affection, are nothing compared to Chairman Mao’s Affection.” My dog! What would you do if your kids found out about that one!? Crawl into a hole, I imagine, and hope for merciful asphyxiation before their laughter had subsided.

I wrote this in April 2002.

Science marches forward. I have made a startling discovery:

dogs eat mulberries.

The mulberry trees I planted are bearing fruit, lots of it, which I eat straight off the tree. Some invariably falls to the ground, where my two four-legged vacuum cleaners, Tlahuy and Bengax, immediately started snarfing them down. Intrigued, I plucked some to feed them, and they eagerly eat all I am willing to feed them.

Did you know before that dogs eat mulberries? I thought their diets were confined to meat, shoes, dogfood, rodents, shoes, leaves, birds, sticks, shoes, marmalade, grasshoppers, bread, frogs, shoes, noodles, ferns, grass, shoes, and whatever items of clothing unwary neighbors did not hang up high enough (although I deny ever seeing Tlahuy and Bengax bringing home that nice brown sweater that is now shredded all over the yard).

If anyone can recommend an appropriate scientific journal in which to publish my findings, I will share with you a part of my Nobel Prize.

我們作事，應該深思熟慮，衡量利弊而後行呢？或者胡裡胡塗迷失方向衝呀衝？愛臺灣，是盲目愛嗎？

現在有人提倡臺灣成為聯合國的會員國；請問，成為聯合國的會員國，有甚麼好處？請一一與我說。美國就有很多人希望退出聯合國，了解嗎？又，聯合國會員費不便宜，你願意增加稅率嗎？

前幾天在都市吃飯時聽到廣播，說希臘就有十六處列為世界遺產，只要臺灣加入聯合國，「相信」臺灣也有很多地方列為世界遺產。請問，廣播員「相信」，這有多少分量？多少說服力？第二，列為世界遺產的好處在哪裡？但最重要的是第三，請問，臺灣有哪個地方有資格齊身為世界遺產？我走遍臺灣，實在想不出有甚麼地方可以與巴特農神殿、吳哥窟、浦甘、萬里長城媲美。李登輝的豪宅？小人國？赤崁樓？北港馬祖廟？恐怕都不夠格。大概只有故宮博物院。可是回到第二點，縱使故宮列為世界遺產，這對我們一般老百姓有多少好處？

在南門市場附近看到一個男生，大概國三高一年齡，身穿一件California Fitness Center汗衫，我感覺很怪。十四五歲的男生活動量應該很大，打球、騎車、滑板、跑、跳、滾、爬，應該可以想出各種消耗體力的途徑，怎到健身房那麼型式化的地方？一則健身房應屬年紀較大、體力、想像力較弱的人去的地方；二則健身房純屬商業化的處所，teenager怎會想去？或許健身房推出全家運動的企劃案。運動總勝不運動，沒話講，可是為甚麼我們必須依照商業策略生活？

回家路上坐捷運，對面阿媽、媽媽帶一個小男生，久歲十歲，滿清秀，可是手上拿一大冊：

青少年MONEY AND YOU

小朋友暑假恐怕被送去補習生財之道。從前看過美國一個dude ranch(觀光牧場)的廣告(承認：是廣告)，照片是幾個牛仔裝的人在西部曠野騎馬，標題是：Nobody wants to grow up to be an investment banker。諦。那個小男生自己有多少興趣暑假學習經濟學、理財、計帳、股市？長輩可以美其名說，為你著想，將來錢多多可以買很多名牌、瞧不起沒錢的人，可是我懷疑，送孩子參加發財暑假營的父母，只是想早點從孩子身上撈錢。從小喝的奶水，都是銅臭。

這種小孩長大會了解多少人生妙趣？

Here’s an oxymoron for you:

Raúl Castro gave his first traditional revolutionary speech.

In case you have forgotten, allow me to remind you that a revolution is supposed to break tradition to turn things topsy-turvy. In Cuba, as in many places, “revolution” has become so entrenched in the Establishment that it has become a convention.

Of course politics is the art of double-think, which is why people swallow such patently incompatible terms as compassionate conservatism.

Glottochronology is the study of the ages of languages, by comparing phonetic changes in a list of basic words, such as dog, foot, mountain, and green. From the difference in pronunciation between two languages, you can supposedly figure out when they diverged from a common stock. This theory was put forth by two American linguists, Swadesh and Lees.

Their premise is ridiculous, because it assumes that languages evolve at a constant rate. Lithuanian retains ancient Indo-European cases; students in Iceland can read thousand year old sagas with little difficulty. I have difficulty reading Shakespeare, who lived only four hundred years ago.

Languages change at different rates. In school (師大, National Taiwan Normal U) I was taught that, concerning Chinese dialects at least, location and geography are important factors in deciding how quickly dialects change. Change is much swifter in open plains with good transportation, much slower in mountains. Northern Chinese dialects, on the great plains of the Yellow River long ago lost many features preserved in southern dialects from the mountains and valleys of Canton, Fujien, and Taiwan; Cantonese dialects are even more conservative than Fujien/Hokien dialects.

For example, Cantonese and Hakka keep complete 入聲/entering tones, words ending in glottal ~k, ~p, ~t, but Fujien dialects have only a few, and northern dialects have lost them entirely.

aside: In college, we had to write poems with Tang dynasty rhymes. This was very challenging, because what rhymed in the eighth century does not necessarily rhyme anymore. The Cantonese speakers (mostly from Hong Kong) in class had no problem. They simply composed in Cantonese and the rhymes all fit. We often asked them to recite poems, to get a better idea of how they sounded in the Tang.

another aside: in a phonology class I analyzed the phonemes of Chinese words in Viet Namese and concluded that they retained the sounds of 盛唐初the early part of the prime of the Tang. In other words, Viet Namese pronunciation of words imported from Chinese has remained stable for well over a thousand years.

Some words have stayed the same for centuries across Chinese dialects: the great hero Lord Kuan/關公 is pretty much the same in any dialect, and he probably pronounced it like that when he lived, in the 3^rd century. But his given name, 雲長, differs greatly in time and place. The reasons for this are complex and boring, so you’ll have to take my word for it; if you had any interest, you would know anyway.

Sometime just before Lord Kuan’s time, there was a great change in Chinese pronunciation. 陰陽對轉不轉了. Final ~g, ~b, ~d, the endings corresponding to ~k, ~p, ~t, disappeared completely and forever across the board, as did consonant clusters. For example, 各/ke was probably pronounced /klok/: compare 各洛. Such features are totally absent in any Chinese dialect, and have been since about the 3^rd century.

These massive changes probably occurred within a century or two, and then the language congealed. In other words, the pronunciation of the Tang dynasty (say in the seventh or eight century) is much closer to modern Cantonese than the Tang was to the Eastern Han, only five hundred years earlier.

The evolution of Chinese phonology resembles closely models of punctuated evolution: stability for a long time, then willy-nilly higgledy-piggledy changes chasing across the language, followed by lasting stability.

aside, concerning punctuated evolution: Scientific American reports, Since IBM introduced the hard disk 50 years ago, the density of data storage has increased by 65 million times – with much of that rise coming in the past decade. This is a good example of punctuated evolution.

In addition, I would like to point out some problems with the basic word list for computing language change, which includes a hundred words. At random, in the first paragraph I listed dog, foot, mountain, and green. Tayal in Wulai pronounce hozin/dog, two different ways: same tribe, same village; people in the same tribe two counties over have another pronunciation again; but everybody pronounces kakay/foot the same: put that in your pipes and smoke it, Swadesh and Lees! Mountain is an English word, but I am not sure if there is an inclusive equivalent in Tayal. A mountain with jungle that people hunt on is hlahuy (thus my faithful dog Tlahuy, a form of the same word), but a sharp mountain farther away is rqyax. My Tayal is not very good, but I do not think there is one word for the English mountain. Green in Tayal sometimes includes what English speakers would call blue. In Mandarin for green we now usually say 綠, but there’s also 青 and other words. And so forth.

So all in all, I do not think glottochronology is either convincing or trustworthy.

As if anybody cares.

本blog讀者應該慶幸，我很少很少寫詩。找到一篇九年前寫的，題目是

星期一在烏來

夏山蟬鳴碧水靜

曲谷竹揖奇巖婷

遊客昨日來烤肉

留下無數寶特瓶

臺灣藍鵲 Taiwan blue magpie Urocissa caerulea

藍鵲通常夏天比較少出現在烏來，冬天就常聽到，可是藍鵲羞澀不喜現，躲在樹梢不見人。

今天很意外聽到藍鵲，很希望可以讓阿超看。如願以償，兩隻藍鵲飛下來在院子地上吃東西；我頭一次看到藍鵲在地上，更何況在庭院內！還好，警覺心極高的三個小朋友睡的不省狗事，藍鵲跳呀吃啊好久。樹鵲不滿，來把藍鵲趕走。後來看到兩隻藍鵲棲在樹上，好像等著我照相似的。

吃呀吃的，兩個依偎在一起；這個行為我以前也沒見過。

Two lovebirds sitting in a tree

Japan has instituted trial by jury; I simply cannot imagine why. Over two hundred years of experience in the US prove that trial by jury is inefficient, unreliable, and rarely serves justice but always benefits the wealthy. To update Robert Frost, a jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who can afford the more expensive lawyer.

The jury trial is so untrustworthy and cumbersome that in the US, only about 7% of civil suits, even fewer criminal cases. Backlog has reduced ‘justice’ to plea bargaining. We need more judges, more fair laws, and fewer juries

This is not to say that jury trials are all bad. They provide lawyers with thousands of billable hours and provide rich living for consulting experts and jury consultants. You know something’s wrong when there’s a whole career available to people who help lawyers pick jurors for rich defendants. And you’ll never, ever heard of a public defense jury consultant!

Twelve unwilling, bored people who have only vague ideas about legal process and know less about the fine points of law are expected to deal with complex issues to reach a decision. The only way a jury trial would be viable would be if law were taught in school along with civics, and a basic understanding of law requisite for applying for a driver’s license. Ha ha, pure fantasy. But if the jury were so holy, why would Americans dodge jury duty more vigorously than grizzly bears or black death?

It’s important to remember that when the jury trial was valid, people were used to listening to long, finely argued debates. The Lincoln Douglas debates went on for five and six hours a day. Today television has degraded the typical attention span to about 15 seconds, and even then only when there are flash and sparkle to hypnotize and numb the viewer.

The jury trial is an outdated anachronism that the US would be well rid of; it works to the benefit of the rich and the detriment of the poor; it is impervious to rhyme or reason. It sounds like just the thing for the DPP regime in Taiwan. Expect any day to hear that Taiwan is taking up the jury trial too. It would certainly be to President Bean’s advantage to start jury trails as soon as possible, because otherwise he will be facing tough questions about his corruption when his term is over and presidential immunity terminated. Down in southern Taiwan, President Bean could beat an old lady with a tennis racquet in front of a thousand witnesses, and they would blame it on the KMT.