I wrote this in November 1998, almost two years after I moved to Wulai, before I got dogs of my own. Sinkang got two dogs and kept them up at his hut, but since he is busy driving his bus, he didn't have much time to spend with them. They were so lonely they would come down to play with me.

"I had a big pile of old wood to burn, remnants of an old fence, so I piled it up a safe distance from the house and set fire to it. It burned all afternoon, and by evening it was still smoldering. At about 8PM, I went out to make sure everything was okay. As I was coming back, I found my path barred by a qimpahu\龜殼花 'turtle-pattern snake' about a meter long. The qimpahu is poisonous, and noted for its aggressive temper and lightning fast movements.

"I asked it to move on, which it didn't, so I stamped my foot, indicating, I'm coming through. It ignored me. Just then Sinkang's dogs came by. I thought, great, they'll bark and chase the snake away so I can go back up. The black and white one came trotting up. Boy, talk about an alert dog protecting us faithfully. Not only did he fail to notice the snake barring my way, but on his way up the path he even stepped on it!! I was amazed: dumb dog meets dumb snake… The snake just kind of ignored him and glared at me. I clambered up another way.”

Since I wrote that, I have become much more familiar with my footless neighbors, because there are a lot of them here in Wulai, and I have become used to that sort of behavior. I probably have more experience with snakes than most people, but I have never seen a snake slither over to attack somebody like they do in the movies. In my bare feet or flipflops I have stepped on poisonous snakes and even kicked a couple by accident, but I always apologize. Keep your distance from snakes, because they are dangerous, have no doubts about that. But there's no need to get all panicky, and if you're all panicky, you can't see how beautiful they are. Certainly snakes are among the most beautiful creatures on earth! Just say hello, admire their beauty, and go your own way.

The photo is a qaxa, 雨傘節 banded krait (Bungarus multicinctus multicinctus), in my front yard. I have to admit that here I was not taking my own advice, but I wanted to get close for a photo, and the qaxa didn't mind. But still, it's always safer to keep your distance from a snake. Just step back and admire.

當老師，任重道遠，真如師大校歌：教育，國之本 (我只記得這一句)。可是我觀察認真教書的老師，我覺得有兩種心態。

第一種，是要當英雄讓學生崇拜。我們在師大學的，教材要適合學生的能力、需要、興趣；但這類老師目的不在于傳道、授業、解惑，要的是當學生的偶像，所以盡量講些冷闢玄邃的事，讓學生眼花撩亂。舉例：以前看過一位老師教一般程度的英文字彙，既不教發音又不講用法，專門講字根，寫的滿黑板都是只有他一個人看懂的梵文豆莢字(寫對寫錯也無人知曉)。第一，英文與梵文是遠親沒錯，可是沒有直系關係；第二，學生花時間花錢的目的是要增強英文能力，不是看你表演寫梵文。可是這位在乎的不是學生的實力，而是學生的崇拜。教學認真沒錯，可是無益。
第二位就像仲尼，希望每一個學生的程度、成就，可以遠遠超越自己：恨鐵不成鋼、盼青出于藍。把學生當樹苗，自己當作澆水施肥的人，想著，兩三百年後，我的墓塚隤圮時，這棵已經長成巨樹，造福後人。

教師節不放假，不把教育當國之本。哀。

父母欲教育子女，花很多心血讓小孩上學、補習、升學，但是子女不管念了多少書，要聽父母，以父母的意見為意見。不希望他越出自己思想的疇域的話，給他念偌多書為的是甚麼？

哈哈哈好天真，讀書不為它，賺錢發財，不然看那麼多書有甚麼用？

Today is Confucius’s birthday, which used to be celebrated as a national holiday, Teachers’ Day, before President Bean got into office and decided education was not worth a holiday.

Let’s all sing together:
Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Confucius, Happy birthday to you!

When you were a kid, did your family sing the following verse?
How old are you, How old are you, How old are you dear Confucius, How old are you?

Boy, that’s a tough one to answer:
Today I am two thousand five hundred fifty nine, Today I am two thousand five hundred fifty nine, Today is my birthday, Today I am two thousand five hundred fifty nine!

Today I hope you take a minute to think gratefully of your teachers and how much you have learned from them.

大家愛臺灣，真好，可是颱風可不可以不要那麼愛臺灣？趕快走呀！

A point well made:
While Bush is unpopular at home, hostility to the outgoing president appears to be much deeper among expatriate donors than the general population in the United States. Obama's many backers in Europe say they are motivated by a yearning for America to once again be viewed with respect by the rest of the world.

Not only in Europe!

後漢書方術列傳：華陀曰，「人體欲得勞動，但不當使極耳。動搖則穀氣得銷，血脉流通，病不得生。譬猶戶樞，終不朽也。是以古之仙者為導引之事，熊經鴟顧，引挽腰體，動諸關節，以求難老。吾有一術，名五禽之戲：一曰虎、二曰鹿、三曰熊、四曰猨、五曰鳥。亦以除疾，兼利蹏足，以當導引。體有不快，起作一擒之戲，怡而汗出，因以著粉，身體輕便而欲食。」

或以斯快、怡字，後人或以戲為遊戲，失之；若如戲劇，近之，猶不的。說文戈部：賊戎戰戲，戲，三軍之偏也；一曰兵也，从戈/虍豆/聲。

漢書竇田灌韓傳：十餘騎入吳軍，至戲下，所殺傷數十人。
顏師古曰，戲，大將之麾也，讀與麾同，又音許宜反。

戲者，角力也。晉語：少師室周為趙簡子右，聞牛談有力，請與之戲。韋注：戲，角力也。

Overheard in the Jungle at 12 midnight
女：怎麼這麼暗？
男：這叫做「晚上」…..

She: Why is it so dark?
He: This is called “nighttime.”

Mosquitoes must exult in the way we slap ourselves on their behalf.

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They say Wulai means hot spring in Tayal, but I think actually it means Mosquito Paradise. Many years ago, a prophet arose among the myriad mosquitoes of Wulai. She called all the mosquitoes together and preached The Coming of the Feast. "Oh, you millions of mosquitoes, hear my words and doubt you not! I foresee the coming of a great feast, and his name shall be called Yugan Dali."

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You people who live in cold climates, envy us our privilege of feeding mosquitoes year round.

Slap!

Can you believe it? This is post #1500 for this blog. Amazing what sort of drivel they'll allow on the internet.

Today I am going to offer a quote that is worth reflecting on. J B Priestley said: "Refuse with scorn the great dope-dreams of the economic emperors and their sorcerers and Hollywood sirens. Don't allow them to inject you with Glamour, Sport, Sensational News, and all the Deluxe nonsense, as if they were filling you with an anesthetic."

This was written right after WWII, but it rings true today.

Today the Wulai village traditional aborigine games were held on the basketball court behind the church. The events were: chicken catching, wood sawing, spear throwing, and rice pounding. I would like the UN to investigate why none of these are Olympic events: a case of blatant discrimination! You just explain to me why beach volleyball is an Olympic sport but rice pounding isn’t. Sheesh!

Well, the Olympics missed all the fun, so we had it (although the chickens did not have such a great time.) The wood sawing event required each of five contestants on a team to saw off a length of a fir log, taking turns. They wanted five teams, to keep things rounded out, and quickly got four teams of strong young men. For the fifth, so they called out Sawye (our village headman), the minister, another local Tayal, and two Yugans, including me. Our team was obviously much older than the other four. The judges assured us it didn’t matter who won, it was all just for fun, don’t worry.

Guess what? All five members of our team finished sawing up our log before the first contestant of any other team had sawed through their log. We had already taken a whole set of victory photos before the team in second place finally finished. All of which just goes to prove the Chinese saying, 薑還是老的辣, old ginger kicks the hardest.

I didn’t throw any spears because a, I can shoot anything but when I throw I can’t hit the side of a barn, and b, I am waiting for the Archery event in the Wulai Township Tribal Games. If the organizing committee remembers to include Archery.

notice in the lower right the cheerleaders for another team, still sawing away ha ha ha.

其實，那天對曹操有點不好意思，因為理所當然把他當鐵石心腸(click here)。事實到底如何，很難辨認。傳說，曹操避董卓之亂，路過呂伯奢家：「伯奢出行，五子皆在，備賓主禮。太祖自以背卓命，疑其圖己，手劍夜殺八人而去。孫盛雜記曰： 太祖聞其食器聲，以為圖己，遂夜殺之。既而悽愴曰：『寧我負人，毋人負我！』遂行。」

但此語出孫盛雜記，「寧我負人，毋人負我 」彷彿不見正史。正史反而說，曹操「逃歸鄉里。從數騎過故人成皋呂伯奢；伯奢不在，其子與賓客共劫太祖，取馬及物，太祖手刃擊殺數人。」

三國歷史，我不在行，孰是孰非，我不知，但知曹操是奇人：武略、詩樂，均為曠世異才，不應貿然依小說家的故事定論。

陶操曰，寧我負麥當勞，毋麥當勞負我!

aaaarrrgh!! Mateys, do you know that today is TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY? Then let's hear it LOUD AND CLEAR, with a WILL me boys and no grousing from you lubbers! and don't forget, you heard in WORLD FIRST right here.

click here: ARGH MATEY!

At the risk of stating the obvious, eating is natural. Under normal circumstances, nobody needs to be reminded to eat. Right?

Since eating is so natural, why does anybody need to be prompted to eat something by advertising? This should give good reason to suspect that if a food product is advertised, you're probably better off if you don't eat it.

Talovich's dietary guidelines:
Eat close to nature. Eat food as it grows; eat as little processed food as possible; eat food as little processed as possible; eat food that either sprouts or rots quickly if it falls on fertile soil (watch this). Very little of what I eat comes wrapped in plastic. If you wish to be healthy and enjoy life, do not place in your mouth, chew, eat, ingest, imbibe, swallow, or take in any of the following: rat poison, eggs of any kind, lead paint, broken glass, flesh of any animal corpse, thumbtacks, razor blades, turpentine, milk, battery acid, tobacco, antifreeze, soda pop, hemlock, strychnine, heroin, and Mickey D fries.

I prefer to be healthy.

People today want Hello Kitty, not Picasso, because Hello Kitty is comforting and does not challenge. Picasso requires you to think; even if you can’t stand him, you have to think about why he irks you.

我覺得現在臺北人失去了一股鬥志。從前的臺北人，不怕共匪、不怕窮、不怕苦，反而越難辦棘手越起勁。現在不面對問題、不思索癥結，只有罵、抱怨、逃避。都是別人的錯。

Consider the lowly leech. It has no brains and it has no spine; it lives by sucking blood. Once it has attached itself to a spot where blood can be sucked, it is very difficult to dislodge, until it has bloated itself.

Sounds like a sure formula for success in corporate management.

All right, it's finally here, my favorite holiday of the year:: 中秋節!! the Moon Festival! Let's go out and make tea and enjoy the moon aaarrghhh let's not go out, it's pouring. A typhoon has come and won't go away. Not a horrific typhoon, although wind has gone up to 16 on the east coast. Problem is it won't leave. In Wulai village we've been getting over 300mm of rain a day for the last three days (for you savages who don't understand metric yet, that’s about 12 inches), which doesn't give you a lot of chance to look at the moon as is due and proper on the Moon Festival.

No big deal, we get lots of typhoons every year. But it may bear noting that Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast, which has been in the news so much, dropped about six inches of rain, with winds at gauge 11. The average annual rainfall for Los Angeles is 380mm a year, which is about what we got today, but they sing It Never Rains in Southern California. It sure does rain in Taiwan. Down south over the last three days they've gotten about 1400mm of rain, and of that, 970mm fell today. Wet, you know?

So what to do on a rainy Moon Festival? Find substitutes.

Maybe a reflection in a glass door can stand in for the moon.

Or maybe not.

It may not be a bad idea to just find a place to lay your head and doze until the rain stops.

When Chinese arrived in San Francisco, partly for their own protection in a strange land and partly because they were Cantonese, they formed many 堂 tongs(tang in Mandarin; hall, meeting hall), societies originally designed for support and protection. Many of these tongs often operated outside the law and engaged in criminal activities. Their ‘enforcers’ were feared inside and outside Chinatown; contemporary reports record their deadly use of the hatchet, for hacking and throwing. These armed men were so fearsome that this has contributed the term ‘hatchet man’ to common speech, someone hired to do dirty work for a boss who keeps his hands clean.

What has always confused me about this is that although Chinese martial arts have a rich variety of weapons, the hatchet has never been prominent. I have never been able to figure out why the tang men used hatchets in the US when it was not a common or familiar weapon at home.

It occurred to me that they were using a familiar tool from home: the 菜刀kitchen knife! The Chinese kitchen knife was unknown to Westerners then, but it looked like a hatchet to them, so that’s what they called it. Or so I conjecture.

I had this tucked away in a folder:
Of 2,318 people surveyed in March 2006 by Harris Interactive and Randstad, 32% say an office loud talker is their biggest pet peeve. Coming in a close second at 30% is using an annoying cellphone ringtone; 22% said speakerphones are their No. 1 peeve.

I have often wished that someone would invent a device that you could place, say, in the corners of a room or over the doors; once the device was activated, if anybody switched on a cell phone in that area, the cell phone would explode. Don't you agree that that would contribute measurably to happiness and mental health? At least mine.

曹操說，寧叫我負天下人，休叫天下人負我。留為千古無情無義鐵石心腸的罪證。

政府呼籲民眾賞月勿烤肉，希望大家努力減碳，結果業者叫苦連天，說會影響他們的生意。寧摧毀生態，休叫我少賺一塊錢！

要減碳、要環保，最徹底、最有效的方法，就是吃素：請click here:: 寧摧毀生態，休叫我少吃一塊肉！

I forget where I read this, but it is food for thought.

A British officer, Major Summerford, fighting in Flanders in February 1918, was knocked off his horse by a bolt of lightning and paralyzed from the waist down. Summerford retired and moved to Vancouver. One day in 1924, as he fished alongside a river, lightning hit the tree he was sitting under and paralyzed his right side. Two years later Summerford had recovered enough that he was able to take walks in a local park. He was walking there one summer day in 1930 when lightning struck him again, permanently paralyzing him. He died two years later. Four years after he died, during a storm, lightning struck a cemetery and destroyed a tombstone. Whose tomb? Major Summerford's.

Somebody forgot to sacrifice to Zeus.

禮記第一句：毋不敬。甚麼事情都不要馬虎；戰戰兢兢，要好好過生活，每一剎那要珍惜要充實要明瞭。
可是一般人不肯，寧可不盡力、寧可逃避、寧可用電視電玩政治運動聲光刺激來麻痺自己，因為若要好好過生活，首必須搞清楚自己在幹甚麼。想要知道自己在活甚麼，需要「誠」；要坦蕩蕩地面對自己。但大家最不願作的、最反感的，是面對自己。寧為行屍走肉、怨天尤人，就是堅決不肯好好過生活。

友人賴鵬智說，「717水災災情慘重，大家要心裡有數這種異常天候將來有可能愈來愈多，而應變的機制必須儘快規劃。這次中南部淹大水的原因很多，這幾天已有許多討論，我是門外漢，不便再參與意見。

不過從水災發生之後，一再聽到地方政治人物及中央民代要求中央政府趕快提更多的經費「治水」，這是我最害怕的事情。前政府通過1160億治水計畫才剛起步，現在政府好像在「民意」壓力下又要加碼。台灣目前財政困難、經濟蕭條，實在很擔心剩下的錢又被不肖官員、民代勾結商人、黑道利用「民心望治（水）」的氣氛狠撈一筆。」
賴鵬智的blog: 在此::

相關文章、圖片在此：

從前聽泰雅長老說，剛開始有鋼筋建築時，烏來有人想效法，卻買不起鋼筋，因此索性就地取材，用竹子代替鋼筋。有好幾棟房子用竹筋水泥造，其中兩三間蓋了三十多年後要改建時打掉了，發現裏面竹筋堅軔如新。

我覺得這個值得研究。很多人可能不放心住竹筋水泥的房子，可是如果一般擋土牆、水溝用竹筋水泥應該可通；竹筋水泥怎樣也比無筋水泥好。我基本反對灌水泥；應該用點頭腦、設法用其它方法改善環境問題，最後實在不得已時才灌水泥。可是很多人水泥頭腦，動不得，所有處境的唯一配方就是水泥。

好吧，如果真的需要水泥的話，我推薦泰雅發明的竹筋水泥。竹子成本低、永續、極度環保，這應該可行吧！

This is the scariest piece I’ve posted, so prepare yourself.

The Republican candidate for VP, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, believes she has a direct, infallible connection to god’s mind, and that she knows just what god wants. What does god want, Governor Palin? God wants US troops to fight in Iraq. It's all part of god’s plan, so you'd better not buck it: "There is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

What else does god want, Governor Palin? God wants that $30 billion natural gas pipeline built; she told students, "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that."

I am not making this up. You can read it here::

I am not Christian, but it seems to me to be impertinent hubris to assume you know what your god wants.

If fighting in Iraq is an assignment from the creator of the universe, how come so many of our warfighters are getting killed? Why hasn't the war been won? Maybe god is too busy laying plans for that pipeline to worry about details such as so many deaths in war, or the destruction of the Alaskan environment. That may be why god can't unify people and companies by himself. And I suppose god likes unmarried teenagers to have babies so they can't finish their education properly?

(my comments on having babies in your teens here:: )

But actually, here is where you can see the difference between Palin and Dubya Bush: Palin believes she knows just what god wants, while Bush believes he is god.

The death penalty has been the subject of prolonged and often emotional debate. My own feeling is that murder and rape are such heinous crimes that some murderers and rapists should be exterminated; that the victims and their families deserve special treatment, and should be freed from the fear of a murderer or rapist being freed on parole. I will include drug dealers, in particular the wholesalers, because of the misery they inflict on so many others.

It costs a lot of money to incarcerate a prisoner. If I remember correctly, the original idea, of benevolent intent, was that prisoners would be reformed rather than executed. Now, however, prisoners are brutalized. If the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, it lasts only minutes; internment is much more cruel, lasts interminably, and benefits nobody.

(okay, well, maybe it does benefit some. Barbara Bush is a big investor in privatized prisons, so cruel and unusual punishment does benefit some. On the principle of ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you,’ maybe laws should state that any investor in privatized prisons has to spend some time in those prisons; the more you invest, the longer you have to stay in them.)

I think the US's most pressing needs now are protecting the ecosystem and reforming prisons. The War on Drugs is a farce, so cease immediately; that would slash the prison population right there. Far fewer people belong in prison, and those that do, should be reformed, not deformed. But again, it costs a lot more money to lock up, feed, and clothe a prisoner, than to kill him; the government's budget is finite, there is only so much tax money to go around; in certain cases, I think the tax money would be better spent on taking good care of those outside prison walls than in incarcerating a murderer or rapist.

But this is where I start getting lost: while there is such a hue and cry against the death penalty, armies and wars are taken for granted. Countries that righteously abolish the death penalty maintain armed forces. We have to defend our sovereignty! It's considered a patriotic duty to kill a young man because he is wearing the wrong uniform, without trial or anything resembling due process. If the death penalty is wrong, what is right about armed forces?

My point here is not to argue for or against the death penalty, but rather to point out what I see as a contradiction. It is wrong to kill one convicted murderer but it is right to kill thousands (the more the better) of people for saluting another flag. I hope someone will please explain the logic of that to me.

And finally, my own personal viewpoint: anybody who advocates abolishing the death penalty, while eating the flesh of dead animals, is a hypocrite, intentional or unintentional. If someone guilty of murder should not be put to death, certainly innocent animals should not be killed to stuff your belly!

First, let me admit that I have not been hanging on every jot and tittle of the US Presidential campaign, although my sympathies are clear: on the one side, we’ve got Candidate Same-old-same-old with a name straight from the British Isles (just like almost every other President in our history), years beyond the mandatory retirement age for civil servants, a bad temper, and a propensity to racism (doesn’t anybody else remember his slurs on the American Viet Namese community?); on the other side, we’ve got a chance to show the world and show ourselves that we are committed to embracing all Americans as Americans; we’ve got a candidate who actually lives in the 21^st century and understands how to live among the tides and currents of technology, politics, and economics. This shouldn’t be too hard to decide.

But I feel that a vital issue is being neglected. The US, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, today has a higher proportion of citizens in prison than the Soviet Union did under Stalin. The US has history’s highest proportion of citizens locked up.

Proportion, proportion, the incarceration rates are not proportionate, big news guess what, not as many whites go to jail as Hispanics and blacks, bet that surprised you. The entire legislative and judicial system is biased to lock up minorities. Equal pay for equal work? Then equal punishment for equal crimes. The system comes down hard on minorities; of course, this is why the White House is graced with the presence of His Travesty Dubya Bush. If African Americans were not charged more often with felonies, more would have voting rights left intact, and you can bet your booties they wouldn’t vote for Dubya with a ten foot pole. So you can see that, from certain perspectives, there are advantages to the system as it sits now.

But inordinate incarceration lacerates individuals, families, and communities; not just the minorities, but everybody in the country suffers. Which would be better for your community; a youth who was carefully educated to develop his abilities and lead a fulfilling life, or a youth who was carefully trained that all his role models end up in prison or dead, that he will most likely end up in prison, and that he has no constructive future?

If I were running for office, I would demand, “Millions for education, not another penny for prisons! Millions for building communities, not another penny for building more prisons! Millions for teachers, doctors, and day care, not another penny for imperialism in Iraq!”

You can see why no party has nominated me for President.