The empty mountain: to see no men,
Barely earminded of men talking - countertones,
And antistrophic lights-and-shadows incoming deeper the deep-treed grove
Once more to glowlight the blue-green mosses - going up (The empty mountain...)
3/16/2008
Going to Space
"Woman Replaces Colleague for South Korea’s First Space Mission
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea announced Monday that a woman who is a bioengineering student would become its first astronaut. She is scheduled to blast off on board a Russian Soyuz rocket on April 8 on a trip to the International Space Station that will be watched on television by millions of South Koreans.
The astronaut, Yi So-yeon, 29, was selected after the Russian space authorities accused the South Korean man who was initially chosen for the mission of breaking training rules.
While South Korea appeared unhappy that it had been asked to make the switch so close to the scheduled launching, women’s groups said Ms. Yi’s participation was likely to further improve the status of women in South Korea’s traditionally male-dominated society.
The astronaut she replaced, Ko San, 30, a computer engineer, was selected for the mission in August after beating 36,000 contestants in a nationwide government competition in which almost any South Korean could apply. Ms. Yi, who came in second in the competition, has been training with Mr. Ko in Russia as his backup since last year.
With less than a month to go before the start of the mission, the South Korean government, which is financing the $27 million trip, decided to replace Mr. Ko with Ms. Yi after a recommendation from the Federal Space Agency in Russia.
The Russian agency told South Korea last week that Mr. Ko had committed “repeated breaches of training protocol,” including taking training manuals out of the training center without permission, said Lee Sang-mok, an official at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
“The Russian space agency has stressed that a minor mistake and disobedience can cause serious consequences in space,” Mr. Lee said during a nationally televised news conference. “So the honor of becoming South Korea’s first astronaut now goes to a woman.”
Paik Hong-yul, president of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, which oversees South Korea’s space program, said Mr. Ko had made “mistakes out of his overenthusiasm in training.”
·According to the mission’s schedule, Ms. Yi, who had just finished her master’s degree in bioengineering before taking up her mission, is to return to Earth on April 19 after conducting scientific experiments at the International Space Station. Mr. Ko will continue to train with Ms. Yi and assist her mission from the ground, the government said.
“This is good news for South Korean women, especially those engaged in science and technology,” said Kim Ji-young, a university professor who leads the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations. “She can be a role model and encourage Korean women who want to enter science and technology, where women have faced bigger walls in finding jobs than men.”
Ms. Yi’s mission will make South Korea the 35th country to send an astronaut into space since Russia first sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961.
So far, 34 countries, including Vietnam, Mongolia and Afghanistan, have sent more than 470 astronauts into space. Fewer than 50 of them were women, starting with Valentina Tereshkova of Russia, in 1963."
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea announced Monday that a woman who is a bioengineering student would become its first astronaut. She is scheduled to blast off on board a Russian Soyuz rocket on April 8 on a trip to the International Space Station that will be watched on television by millions of South Koreans.
The astronaut, Yi So-yeon, 29, was selected after the Russian space authorities accused the South Korean man who was initially chosen for the mission of breaking training rules.
While South Korea appeared unhappy that it had been asked to make the switch so close to the scheduled launching, women’s groups said Ms. Yi’s participation was likely to further improve the status of women in South Korea’s traditionally male-dominated society.
The astronaut she replaced, Ko San, 30, a computer engineer, was selected for the mission in August after beating 36,000 contestants in a nationwide government competition in which almost any South Korean could apply. Ms. Yi, who came in second in the competition, has been training with Mr. Ko in Russia as his backup since last year.
With less than a month to go before the start of the mission, the South Korean government, which is financing the $27 million trip, decided to replace Mr. Ko with Ms. Yi after a recommendation from the Federal Space Agency in Russia.
The Russian agency told South Korea last week that Mr. Ko had committed “repeated breaches of training protocol,” including taking training manuals out of the training center without permission, said Lee Sang-mok, an official at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
“The Russian space agency has stressed that a minor mistake and disobedience can cause serious consequences in space,” Mr. Lee said during a nationally televised news conference. “So the honor of becoming South Korea’s first astronaut now goes to a woman.”
Paik Hong-yul, president of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, which oversees South Korea’s space program, said Mr. Ko had made “mistakes out of his overenthusiasm in training.”
·According to the mission’s schedule, Ms. Yi, who had just finished her master’s degree in bioengineering before taking up her mission, is to return to Earth on April 19 after conducting scientific experiments at the International Space Station. Mr. Ko will continue to train with Ms. Yi and assist her mission from the ground, the government said.
“This is good news for South Korean women, especially those engaged in science and technology,” said Kim Ji-young, a university professor who leads the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations. “She can be a role model and encourage Korean women who want to enter science and technology, where women have faced bigger walls in finding jobs than men.”
Ms. Yi’s mission will make South Korea the 35th country to send an astronaut into space since Russia first sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961.
So far, 34 countries, including Vietnam, Mongolia and Afghanistan, have sent more than 470 astronauts into space. Fewer than 50 of them were women, starting with Valentina Tereshkova of Russia, in 1963."
Mayhem for the Western Zang 西藏乱七八糟
"DHARAMSALA, India (Thomson Financial) - The Dalai Lama on Sunday condemned what he called China's 'rule of terror' and 'cultural genocide' in Tibet, calling for an international probe into unrest in his homeland.
'They simply rely on using force in order to simulate peace, a peace brought by force using a rule of terror,' the Tibetan spiritual leader said in Dharamsala in northern India, seat of Tibet's government-in-exile.
'Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some cultural genocide is taking place. There is some kind of discrimination: the Tibetans in their own land quite often are treated as second-class citizens,' he said.
'Please investigate, if possible... some
international organization can try firstly to inquire about the situation in Tibet.'
But the Dalai Lama -- who has made Dharamsala his home in exile since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese forces in 1959 -- refrained from calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in August, as many Tibetan exiles have been demanding.
'The Chinese people... need to feel proud of it. China deserves to be a host of the Olympic Games,' he said, saying however that Beijing also needed to be 'reminded to be a good host.'
The Dalai Lama's comments came hours after China declared a 'people's war' in Tibet following the biggest uprising against Chinese rule there in nearly 20 years.
Eighty people have been confirmed dead, the Tibetan government-in-exile said here, contradicting the official account in China's state-run media that there were just 10 fatalities.
When asked about the death toll, the Dalai Lama said: 'We have different sources: some say 10, some say 30, some say 60, some say 80, 100. I do not know.'
'Some trusted group should go there and see how it happened,' he added.
The Dalai Lama also appealed to China to recognize that he wanted autonomy for Tibet, and not independence, and that his campaign was non-violent.
When asked if he was able to bring an end to Tibetan protests, he said, 'I have no such power.'
'I do feel helpless.'
The unrest in Tibet followed three days of protests by hundreds of monks in Lhasa, India and elsewhere around the world marking the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising.
The Dalai Lama has long complained that Beijing is flooding Tibet with Han Chinese in order to make the Tibetans a minority in their Buddhist homeland."
Source: Forbes
'They simply rely on using force in order to simulate peace, a peace brought by force using a rule of terror,' the Tibetan spiritual leader said in Dharamsala in northern India, seat of Tibet's government-in-exile.
'Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some cultural genocide is taking place. There is some kind of discrimination: the Tibetans in their own land quite often are treated as second-class citizens,' he said.
'Please investigate, if possible... some
international organization can try firstly to inquire about the situation in Tibet.'
But the Dalai Lama -- who has made Dharamsala his home in exile since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese forces in 1959 -- refrained from calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in August, as many Tibetan exiles have been demanding.
'The Chinese people... need to feel proud of it. China deserves to be a host of the Olympic Games,' he said, saying however that Beijing also needed to be 'reminded to be a good host.'
The Dalai Lama's comments came hours after China declared a 'people's war' in Tibet following the biggest uprising against Chinese rule there in nearly 20 years.
Eighty people have been confirmed dead, the Tibetan government-in-exile said here, contradicting the official account in China's state-run media that there were just 10 fatalities.
When asked about the death toll, the Dalai Lama said: 'We have different sources: some say 10, some say 30, some say 60, some say 80, 100. I do not know.'
'Some trusted group should go there and see how it happened,' he added.
The Dalai Lama also appealed to China to recognize that he wanted autonomy for Tibet, and not independence, and that his campaign was non-violent.
When asked if he was able to bring an end to Tibetan protests, he said, 'I have no such power.'
'I do feel helpless.'
The unrest in Tibet followed three days of protests by hundreds of monks in Lhasa, India and elsewhere around the world marking the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising.
The Dalai Lama has long complained that Beijing is flooding Tibet with Han Chinese in order to make the Tibetans a minority in their Buddhist homeland."
Source: Forbes
2/23/2008
how nasty tubers helped the Industrial Revolution
"When conquistadors subjugated Peru in 1534, the Inca civilization was only their first victim. Spain too would eventually pay a heavy price. The Spaniards discovered a veritable mountain of silver at Potosí, but it was only thanks to the potato — domesticated in Peru's uplands some 8,000 years earlier — that Spanish slave drivers could feed the army of conscripted miners they deployed to dig up the silver. As John Reader recounts in Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History, the flood of bullion proved more than the Old World could absorb. The unintended result: inflation that shredded Europe's social fabric, disrupted its monetary system and debased the precious metal itself. Blame it on the potato.
How or when the humble tuber followed the silver to Europe is unclear, but by the early 17th century the stage was set there for a vast expansionary phase in the potato's history. Despite being regularly denounced from pulpits because it was not mentioned in the Bible, this imported esculent (foodstuff) soon became a peasant favorite. Not only did it yield four times more calories per acre than grain, making it an essential insurance policy against famine; it also, as an underground crop, was less likely than stored grain to be looted by armies living off the land in those war-torn times.
Wherever the potato has been adopted populations have boomed. In 1798 pioneering demographer Thomas Malthus complained that more food brings more mouths, and warned that the potato would depress wages and living standards by pushing Europe's population far beyond the opportunities of employment. What Malthus didn't know was that Europe was already in the throes of a development that would quickly swallow any labor surplus: the Industrial Revolution.
It was, writes Reader, "one of those remarkable synergies [that] the potato arrived in Europe and established itself as a staple food ... precisely when Europe's burgeoning industries were beginning to cry out for workers." It would be stretching a point, Reader concedes, to claim that the potato set off the Industrial Revolution, but he makes a good case for its role in fuelling it. And what flowed from that revolution is, as they say, history — industrial Europe's global rise (and decline), the catastrophic Irish potato famine and the migrations that took Europe's population surpluses to the New World.
Today Solanum tuberosum has gone global to become the world's fourth largest food crop after wheat, rice and maize — not bad for a tuber whose ancestor is the highly toxic wild potato and whose closest cousin is the deadly nightshade. And its popularity still has vast potential for growth: Asia has replaced Europe as the center of production as its populations begin to embrace French fries as well as rice.
The UN has designated 2008 as the Year of the Potato, exhorting food experts to examine "the potential contribution of the potato to defeating hunger." A worthy cause, indeed, but one to pursue with caution. The best efforts of breeders have failed to improve greatly the disease resistance of the potato, which is the world's most chemically dependent crop — the global cost of fungicides alone stands at over $2 billion a year. And although the potato may, as Reader puts it, be "the best-all round bundle of nutrition known," diet gurus regularly denounce it for raising blood sugar levels. Its record for lifting people out of poverty is patchy at best. "It is very good at feeding hungry people, but not so good at improving their economic status," is Reader's stark conclusion. As in Spain's Golden Age, so too today: the potato's legacy is a decidedly mixed bag. "
Source: Time
How or when the humble tuber followed the silver to Europe is unclear, but by the early 17th century the stage was set there for a vast expansionary phase in the potato's history. Despite being regularly denounced from pulpits because it was not mentioned in the Bible, this imported esculent (foodstuff) soon became a peasant favorite. Not only did it yield four times more calories per acre than grain, making it an essential insurance policy against famine; it also, as an underground crop, was less likely than stored grain to be looted by armies living off the land in those war-torn times.
Wherever the potato has been adopted populations have boomed. In 1798 pioneering demographer Thomas Malthus complained that more food brings more mouths, and warned that the potato would depress wages and living standards by pushing Europe's population far beyond the opportunities of employment. What Malthus didn't know was that Europe was already in the throes of a development that would quickly swallow any labor surplus: the Industrial Revolution.
It was, writes Reader, "one of those remarkable synergies [that] the potato arrived in Europe and established itself as a staple food ... precisely when Europe's burgeoning industries were beginning to cry out for workers." It would be stretching a point, Reader concedes, to claim that the potato set off the Industrial Revolution, but he makes a good case for its role in fuelling it. And what flowed from that revolution is, as they say, history — industrial Europe's global rise (and decline), the catastrophic Irish potato famine and the migrations that took Europe's population surpluses to the New World.
Today Solanum tuberosum has gone global to become the world's fourth largest food crop after wheat, rice and maize — not bad for a tuber whose ancestor is the highly toxic wild potato and whose closest cousin is the deadly nightshade. And its popularity still has vast potential for growth: Asia has replaced Europe as the center of production as its populations begin to embrace French fries as well as rice.
The UN has designated 2008 as the Year of the Potato, exhorting food experts to examine "the potential contribution of the potato to defeating hunger." A worthy cause, indeed, but one to pursue with caution. The best efforts of breeders have failed to improve greatly the disease resistance of the potato, which is the world's most chemically dependent crop — the global cost of fungicides alone stands at over $2 billion a year. And although the potato may, as Reader puts it, be "the best-all round bundle of nutrition known," diet gurus regularly denounce it for raising blood sugar levels. Its record for lifting people out of poverty is patchy at best. "It is very good at feeding hungry people, but not so good at improving their economic status," is Reader's stark conclusion. As in Spain's Golden Age, so too today: the potato's legacy is a decidedly mixed bag. "
Source: Time
2/06/2008
在莫哈韦沙漠上你可以打高爾夫球还是为什么美国的上帝叫悪魔
source: National Geographic在美国的莫哈韦沙漠上，可以打高爾夫球，真聪明 ;(
The real God of the United States of America is called Mammon。The Americans are still engulfed in a 19th century political rhetoric whereas the real problem is the ecological threat...
在香港有一个公司叫Mammon。http://www.mammonhk.com/car/en/Aboutus.asp?Title=Company%20Profile好像中国人不太知道Mammon的意思。
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