It’s All Just A Ride

I just finished processing all the photos I took at the Harvest Festival in Bannister. I decided to take it easy this year and just do stills, especially since I haven’t given my camera a workout in a little while. I like how some of them turned out, but I got more grain in many of them than I had expected. The weather was pretty overcast all day, so that may have had something to do with it.

Here is the link to the Flickr slideshow for the photoset.

Some little anthropological nuggets I gleaned: While many assume that in ethnic communities the elder members would be keen on passing down an important element of heritage like language, my mother said that her parents reserved speaking Czech for times when they didn’t want the children to know what they were saying. It also seemed like there was a clique there that was composed of first/second generation elders who spoke the language. This makes me curious if keeping language as part of the heritage was ever a big concern, or if it is and there just aren’t the resources to teach it, this being a primarily working-class community.

Via This blog sits at the… I’ve finally seen something genuinely creative come out of Microsoft. It’s called Photosynth, which is in essence a photo aggregator that maps photos taken from many disparate sources and integrates them into a kind of 3-D navigable model, with no tagging necessary. Maybe “Live Labs” has more cool stuff up their sleeve.

June Teufel Dreyer: Economic Development in Tibet Under the People’s Republic of China

Dreyer’s chapter is a great introduction to this part of the book. It outlines the economic policies from the period of Chinese takeover to the present. Notable points include her statement that it is curious that when communes were finally introduced to Tibet in the early 70′s it was long after the drawbacks of them were widely known, which suggests that hard line political ideologues were probably quite instrumental in their creation. Also, she gives a great overview of some of the more popular criticisms of Beijing’s development drive, such as who it really benefits, and if dependence on heavy subsidization from the rest of the country means that Beijing’s development policy in Tibet is doomed to fail simply because it is not sustainable financially. Also interesting is that some CCP cadres are keen to be seen as enforcers of security, and so must encourage some incidents of dissent merely to crack down on them to show their competence, and that Hu Jintao’s relatively poor performance in Tibet economically was excused because he ended the riots in the late 80′s.

Dawa Norbu: Economic Policy and Practice in Contemporary Tibet

Dawa Norbu was known both inside the Tibetan diaspora community and the international scholar community on Tibet as a person who could usually be trusted to give you an even-handed picture of whatever the issue at hand was, and took flak from TGIE supporters at times for being critical of the exile government. In that sense this chapter both confirms that image and yet also in a small way denies it. In the first half Norbu opines about the lack of trustworthy statistical data regarding Tibet, both before and after 1950. Before 1950 there was almost nothing, after there was much, but could not be verified or trusted, and was of little use to anyone but scholars of propaganda. Norbu then spends a few sections correcting that lack of statistical data, giving some interesting numbers on Han migration, economic performance, etc. Then, about halfway through he gets a bit polemical, often referring to “Stalinist-Chinese gigantism” and strays too far into the language of cultural genocide conspiracy theory for my liking, though to be fair he doesn’t reach the lengths of someone like Jamyang Norbu, who has always seemed like the Michael Moore of Tibetans to me (i.e. has some good points but buries them in polemical screeds to the point where the focus becomes more on hyperbole and partisanship than anything else). I can’t fault Norbu’s data, and I havn’t heard much of what he says in this chapter contested anywhere, but it is his later descent into decidedly non-objective viewpoints divorced from much actual data that unsettles me a bit.

Hu Xiaojiang and Miguel A. Salazar: Market Formation and Transformation: Private Business in Lhasa

This article is one that is potentially very useful, and one that serves up some concrete data on a topic that is often at the heart of contention on the Tibet issue; that of Tibet’s development, who is engaged in it, and who it is benefiting from it. The authors use both general data gathered from multiple sources (media, news, etc) and that of the BRD (Business Registration Data). The BRD contains data about the province of origin of the owner, education, etc, that are crucial to the questions being asked. Increased credibility is given to these data by the fact that they were received in raw, untabulated form.

Prior to economic reform in 1980, 100% of business in the TAR were Tibetan-owned (less than 500 registered), due to legal restrictions on inter-provincial trade. Is the larger, yet “less Tibetan” economy of today a negative state of affairs? Is it not the case that urban centers are often composed of a good percentage of foreign-owned businesses in general? Ratio of local:foreign owned businesses in 2000 was 3:7 in Lhasa, 7:3 elsewhere in the TAR. Specialization of crafts based on origin is prominent, i.e. when you want product “A” go to a vendor from a region that is known for making good “A”. Tibetans tend to dominate “traditional” markets in handicrafts and other Tibetan cultural commodities, while immigrants with personal connections to the trade networks tend to dominate non-local commodity markets. However, there is no reason that Tibetans are barred from “modern” commodity markets. Case in point, most internet cafes are Tibetan owned. The market in the TAR generally tends to saturate, then stabilize, as seems logical for a region that is experiencing rapid growth. First comes a big rush, then a big crash, then a leveling out.

Control of trade networks based on personal relations can still benefit Tibetans, who tend to have strong ties with South Asian countries like India, Nepal, etc. Perhaps this is one place where the Tibetan diaspora into India could be a boon.

The article ends by stating that we can only asses the real situation of migration in Tibet when we start looking at it as a migration issue, and not another political issue. Then and only then will the real intricacies become clear. In a wider sense, merely distilling the influx of migrant workers to Tibet as a case of ethnic genocide is too close to the rhetoric used here in the U.S. against migration from Latin America. The old claim of, “they’re takin’ our jobs” assumes that those jobs would otherwise be filled by natives, and done so on the same scale as is currently so.

Bhutan is an interesting country. A small Buddhist kingom situated between India and China, many know it for its flouting of the GDP standard in favor of GNH (Gross National Happiness) as its economic indicator. Still others might know it as a famous tourist destination. Indeed, the tiny Himalayan kingdom has been lauded for its controlled tourism policy, which only allows a certain number of visitors per year to reduce the environmental and social impacts that come with huge waves of tourists.

Few, however, know the side of Bhutan that created a huge refugee crisis, one that has serious ethnic (almost racist) implications, or, as recent news shows, the side that strips the rights of newspapers to publish freely. Some know that the government of Bhutan has decreed that all Bhutanese citizens must wear traditional dress, and that it takes great pains to preserve its cultural heritage, but I wonder how many seriously question the idea that a government that dictates the very clothes you can wear is all that wonderful.

The only reason this is that interesting to me (there are plenty of other repressive governments to look at, after all, many of whom are far more repressive) is this: When I hear many people talk of Tibet, the Himalayas, etc, (Bhutanese are very closely related culturally to Tibetans) they do so with this argument that had China not invaded Tibet in 1949, and had the Bhuddist theocracy that preceded the takeover been left to its own devices, Tibet would still be a wonderful place where monks and lamas cultivate spiritual mana from the roof of the world for the greatness and benefit of all mankind, pouring rivers of enlightenment down to the soulless masses of the industrialized world below.

Ok, now I’m getting condescending, sorry.

Anyway, I guess to me Bhutan is simply a lesson that while Bhuddism may be a great philosophy, a Bhuddist heart can still wield  unbelievable hypocrisy and do things just as dirty as the rest of the members of the human race (yeah, “duh”, I know, seems really elementary). There is no reason to think that simply because a government professes to be Bhuddist that it somehow would intrinsically be on a moral high ground above all others. But then, in my experience, many Western converts to Buddhism embrace it with just as much unquestioning blindness and newly rose-tinted glasses as those who fervently embrace any other of the worlds many religions.  I’ve listened to many a student of Bhuddism criticize Christianity, while simultaneously ignoring the pitfalls of Bhuddism. Some like to think that Bhuddists are somehow incapable of doing evil, though even Bhuddists have had their share of nasty warlike periods (in certain periods of Japan’s feudal history monks were just as fearsome as any Shogun or Samurai). The unabashed Orientalism that I’ve been witness to sometimes embarrasses me, though I will admit that I too had that period in my studies where I thought anything Eastern was just the bees-knees.

Perhaps that is why the government has added a stipulation that forbids Bhuddist monks to run for elections after the new democratic reforms get into swing.

I jest, of course. The goal seems to be more to protect Bhuddism from politics, rather than to protect politics from Bhuddism. Maybe in that sense some fervent religious types in this country could take some pointers.

My history with WordPress, one of the most popular self-hosted blogging platforms, is admittedly not that long. Maybe a little over a year. I hadn’t fully appreciated the fact that one can make static pages in WordPress until I saw Kerim’s post on using it as a CMS. That was a few months ago, and at first it seemed a bit counter intuitive. Why use a blogging platform for creating static pages? Then, when the LRC decided to revamp its website, the concept suddenly became much clearer. If you want to have a blog as part of your website, it is much simpler to start with WordPress and adapt it to also use static pages, rather than the other way ’round. Building a blog from scratch is no easy feat. You need a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL or PostGreSQL. Most people who are into making websites can handle the first two, but the last two are more for advanced users.

I don’t know enough PHP or database scripting to build a blog from scratch, so WordPress is a necessity. I do, however, have enough know-how to edit a CSS template, and tweak existing PHP code to fit a WordPress template to my own needs. Thus, WordPress takes care of the hard part. This way all of your static pages retain the same CSS styling that the blog does, ensuring continuity between pages. Pages can then easily be added, deleted, or edited by any authorized users (thus the idea of CMS). This technique does require one to reverse-engineer a template, but I usually find that much more fun than building from scratch.

Leveraging WordPress also gives you access to easy to use plugins that do things like re-order your links, display Flickr feeds, display other RSS feeds, and any number of other niche tasks you can think of. In most cases there is no need to actually alter any code, rather you use the WordPress administrative interface to select the options for any given plugin. Basically, it is as extensible and flexible as you want it to be, for the most part, and it’s all free.

I want one of these. I don’t know what I’d do with it, but man would it be fun to play with.

Apple’s IME system in OS X is about the most painless in existence as far as I have seen. Adding input support for different languages is as easy as checking a tick-mark in a box. Unfortunately, in practice, it proves to be a bit less user friendly when dealing with certain languages. In my case, the support for Chinese characters is a bit cumbersome. The standard Apple “International” IME only allows entry of one charcter at a time, while Microsoft’s IMEs will input multiple-character phrases (good luck figuring out how to set it up, though).

Also, you could previously buy tablets and third-party software for hand-written character recognition, such as PenPower, but those have been discontinued as far as my research on the subject has shown. With InkWell being integrated within OS X one would think that character recognition would be a breeze to implement (just license an algorithm from a third party), but it looks as if Apple only cared enough to include support for European languages in InkWell, which is a shame, because a Modbook with Chinese character recognition would be super-sweet.

The best answer I have found to date to the first problem, that of keyboard input, is to install OpenVanilla, but even that has its drawbacks. First, it defaults to Simplified Chinese input in pinyin, even though OS X supports both Traditional and Simplified. Why not have a preference item to select the default input? Odd. Also, the input system itself is a bit clunky, unless I’m just doing something wrong. When you input a pinyin word that has more than ten possible character matches, hitting the space bar, which would normally select the first match, takes you to the next set of ten matches, so there is no way to select the first match, which is usually the one you want. It just keeps cycling through the match sets. Annoying.

Apple needs to get their buns in gear. With Leopard coming out soon, better IME support is going to be a big factor in my impression of it. InkWell needs to be updated to include popular non-Euro languages, like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Especially the Asian, non-phonetic scripts, which certainly seem like the more logical choice for handwritten input, as opposed to languages like English which work just fine via keyboard input.

Also, with OS X having been out for eons the third-party developers need to get cracking with more software too. Too many companies never left the dustbin of OS 9 since Classic was there in OS X to fall back on, then Apple yanked it in 10.4. Heck, even the Vistas Spanish text still comes with an outdated piece of multimedia software that isn’t technically supposed to run on OS X (but does if you don’t follow the instructions) which is actually kind of ridiculous since I assume most of these multimedia CD-ROMS are built with Macromedia software like Flash, and would only mean they’d have to re-export the previous file on a new system. One more reason for Language technology specialists to get in gear and actually start producing more software instead of just using what is given to them by the consumer market.

Via Japundit: A team of paleontologists apparently discovered that villagers in a town near a fossil-rich site were selling dinosaur bones as “Dragon bones” with healing properties. While I knew that the Oracle Bones dug up in fields were believed to be dragon bones (because they had divination inscriptions on them), I don’t think I’ve heard of actual giant reptile bones being mistaken for other mythical giant reptilian bones. Fun.

Coming to me via Del.icio.us is a link to a fabulous photo gallery featuring some stunning portraits of Tibetans circa 2004 and 2006. Some of these images are just gorgeous. Favorites include #10, 13, 14, 23, and 27. #10 actually gives you a pretty good idea of what a typical modern Lhassan dresses like.

While at IALLT last week, there were a lot of discussions revolving around wikis and blogs. I had a couple of short conversations with some other conference-goers about wikipedia. I love the idea of wikipedia, anthropologically and just in its own right, but it is of course subject to certain limitations by its own nature. It is a great real-world model of truth-building in action. The downsides of this, however, have been discussed far too many times to merit mentioning them again.

From the weaknesses of wikipedia, citizendium was born. Citizendium is an attempt to put wikipedia on a leash, so to speak, with articles being checked by “authors” who’s credentials are posted and able to be checked themselves. Essentially, it is the hierarchical, ivory-tower wikipedia, to put it not-so-nicely. This is not to sound as though I am against the idea. I’m actually all for it.

In recent years I have come to think of the internet as “too democratic” in a way. By this I don’t mean that I think we should start an internet Gestapo, or start taking down websites that offer viewpoints that are frankly quite absurd, but I think we need to face the fact that most of us, as human beings, need to have some sort of validated authority to at least give those working in the fringes some kind of orbit to hang to. Wikipedia is a lackluster substitute for such an authority orbit. When anyone can edit a page then there need to be people to cross-check that editing, and if it is wrong, or simply vandalism, then someone needs to change it back, then it gets vandalized again, etc and so on.

All of this requires people to be always engaged, and ever on the lookout. With so many wikipedia entries on any number of finite topics, your just asking for neglect and degradation somewhere. With Citizendium’s mild restrictions you get that sense of authority, with all the power of citizen contribution. While some may decry the idea of a gate-keeper at the doors of knowledge, I would say that that is and always will be the way we view “real” knowledge. If it isn’t being moderated or validated in some way then it is simply not trusted.

The ultimate point, here, which I feel I may have long ago dropped, is that Citizendium may be the middle ground that “real” academics (those with the papers to prove it) could get on board with. Most professors I talk to don’t give wikipedia the time of day, and routinely mock it, and cringe at the thought of it being their students’ go-to-guy for instant knowledge. My Chinese professor is one such person. When he voiced his disapproval of wikipedia in class one day I asked him why he complains when he could just edit the pages he finds so inadequate. Understandably, he made the excuse that he doesn’t have the time,  however, I think it has more to do with apathy than anything else. That and you can’t put “edited the wikipedia entry for ‘Tang Dynasty Poets’” on your CV, and it won’t get you anywhere with regard to tenure or promotion.

Sadly, the thing that gave wikipedia its wings was its robust user input, and if academics are not willing to help Citizendium, then it will fail, and they will still be stuck with wikipedia.

A wholly other option would be to use the peer-review and publication system that academics are so fond of, and integrate those publications in a wiki-style format, with cross-links and meta data, so that you could navigate the corpus of publications on a certain topic as easily (or close) as you can wikipedia. Full articles, or perhaps abstracts, could constitute the body of the entries, while tags, links to related pages, and a short entry on the status of the articles thesis (is it widely accepted? what interesting concepts does it bring up? Who disagrees or has written articles that uphold or contradicts it?). The open source movement, it would seem, would be critical for this to work. The nature of copyright and publication necessarily stifles the free distribution of information that wikipedia makes so key to its framework.

Whatever happens, academics need to get on the boat, fast. Otherwise academic apathy to the technologies of knowledge in the new millennium will make the academic system a laughing stock. Like an 8-track in a Lexus.