tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70826552024-10-24T16:29:42.633+08:00Views from a Westerner in the EastJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.comBlogger129125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-39320828853025854902011-02-04T00:34:00.001+08:002011-02-04T00:34:56.210+08:00

I have migrated my blog here and hope to be writing more thoughts on spirituality as well as observations on society...

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-3234710893421995922009-01-01T14:49:00.004+08:002009-01-01T14:57:28.471+08:00

Clever editing for those of us who don't stay on top of pop music.But my sons know most of these.... Below are the Top 10 albums of the year (I assume it is in the US and not worldwide).... Did you know Taylor Swift was the biggest-selling artist of the year?1. Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne (2.88 million)2. Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay (2.15 million)3. Fearless, Taylor Swift (

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-4429619599180429262009-01-01T14:20:00.002+08:002009-01-01T14:23:20.691+08:00

Though it is dwarfed by Microsoft in terms of market share, Mac is still way ahead in terms of friendliness, usability, coolness and fun!I've used Macs since 1987, and they way surpass my experience on my Windows machines (yes, I also have them at home and office, ugh).After nearly 25 years, the Macintosh and its offspring, such as the iPod and iPhone, are still leading in terms of setting the

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-85424726157274279292008-11-23T12:03:00.002+08:002008-11-23T12:06:16.424+08:00

Spiritual leaders must learn that there is a difference between spirituality and spiritual influence. Spirituality is internal, spiritual influence is external. It is not enough to develop internal spirituality, spiritual leaders must also learn how to express their spirituality externally in order to gain spiritual authority.Tom Peters has a great example from the current auto industry crisis.

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-73011351686210064572008-11-18T08:39:00.001+08:002008-11-18T08:43:22.799+08:00

Condensed from a longer, detailed and disturbing report:For the last 11 months, Christians in India's Orissa state and elsewhere have been the objects of hateful persecution. A report by internationnal human-rights investigators, lays out the mistreatment and abuse in unsettling detail.-In Orissa State, 65 identified people have been killed and 85 are still unaccounted for.Among those killed were

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-55405756972554384672008-11-13T09:58:00.002+08:002008-11-13T10:01:44.961+08:00

Following the Sichuan earthquake, there is more openness to spirituality in helping people recover from trauma. This article has a couple of interesting observations:But on December 28, 2007, President Jintao relieved some of China's cultural schizophrenia: He signaled a move from atheism to secularism—from "no God" to "a non-political role for God." He called an unprecedented Politburo session

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-28025073931645073272008-11-12T09:36:00.000+08:002008-11-12T09:37:22.616+08:00

Tuesday marked the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, with the handful of surviving veterans at the vanguard of commemorations for the fallen of "The War to End All Wars." Leaders from the powers that fought the war, now allies, gathered at the site of the 1916 Battle of Verdun, where 300,000 men were slaughtered over 11 months of bloody trench warfare. French President Nicolas Sarkozy

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-2462823128921505932008-09-30T18:32:00.003+08:002008-09-30T18:40:40.116+08:00

Can the majority be counted on to choose what is right? I go along with Abraham Lincoln - it is doubtful.It is disappointing to see politicians making decisions for their people based on whether or not they will be re-elected as a result. The world needs leaders who will choose to do what is right, not what is most popular. This from the Financial Times regarding the failed vote on the

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-60518758366550204082008-07-24T05:59:00.001+08:002008-07-24T06:01:14.139+08:00

Yikes! A bad time to be moving back to Singapore from the US. In addition to inflation listed below, US dollar is down about 15% in the last year : (Overall, Singaporeans paid 9.2 per cent more for food than they did a year ago because of more expensive items such as cooked food, rice, milk products, fresh poultry and vegetables. Housing costs also went up by 13.4 per cent on year because of

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-87182019481657199702008-07-09T05:17:00.001+08:002008-07-09T05:20:30.058+08:00

This LA Times article compares the three big medal-winning countries at the Olympics:Crystal-ball gazers expect each of the three sports powerhouses to do well next month in their traditional areas of strength -- table tennis, badminton and diving for China, swimming and track and field for the U.S. and boxing, wrestling and other "combat sports" for Russia -- with all three elbowing one another

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-92131295518906396612008-06-28T02:54:00.002+08:002008-06-28T02:56:55.497+08:00

"...the world is in the midst of a huge wave of tall building construction, both in number and in size. Some 36 buildings rise more than 300 meters, or roughly 1,000 feet, the threshold generally used to define “supertall” buildings, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a nonprofit organization based at the Illinois Institute of Technology. An additional 69 supertalls are

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-52294428840716869432008-06-22T03:08:00.003+08:002008-06-22T04:50:26.376+08:00

I kinew there were a lot of Singaporeans in Shanghai, now I have a statistic from Channel News Asia:"With 7,000 Singapore residents, Shanghai has the largest population of Singaporeans in China....China is also Singapore's second largest visitor-generating market, with Singapore welcoming some 1.11 million Chinese visitors in 2007, a 66 per cent increase over the last five years"

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-43664005915732004652008-05-02T13:51:00.001+08:002008-05-02T13:55:18.519+08:00

...everything is BIGGERBeijing airport’s new Terminal 3 — twice the size of the Pentagon — is the largest building in the world....The developers call it the “most advanced airport building in the world,” and say it was completed in less than four years, a timetable some believed impossible.

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-74578424808959303952008-05-01T14:09:00.002+08:002008-05-01T14:12:00.749+08:00

As the Chinese become more affluent, they are going to start gobbling up world resources like the Americans have been...China has overtaken the USA to become the world's No. 1 industrial source of carbon dioxide, the most important global-warming pollutant, according to a scientific study to be published today.The study and two others — one recently published and another coming — agree that

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-82937171810529361962008-04-28T13:10:00.004+08:002008-04-28T13:18:44.716+08:00

NYT article, on visiting a huge bookstore in China:On shelf after shelf, I could see copies of Jim Collins’s “Good to Great,” Jack Welch’s “Straight From the Gut,” Tom Peters’s “Re-Imagine!” and just about everything the late Peter Drucker ever wrote. There was no management topic, no matter how arcane — the science of H.R. anyone? — that didn’t have its own section.There’s a good reason for this

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-27372268651994750252008-04-24T02:54:00.002+08:002008-04-24T02:58:04.452+08:00

I've only read one of these books, by Jenkins. Martin Marty is well-qualified to give us a comprehensive list like this.My Top 5 Books on World ChristianityBy Martin E. Marty, author of The Christian World: A Global HistoryA World History Of ChristianityEdited by Adrian HastingsThe fourteen historians who contribute to A World History of Christianity do what no single historian could do with

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-58628144730014328862008-01-15T12:42:00.000+08:002008-01-15T12:44:33.639+08:00

More Chinese tourists are headed to America, thanks to new agreements between US and Chinese governments. And when they come to the US, they come to California."The Chinese are surprisingly big spenders when they come here, doling out about $6000 each -- more than visitors from any other nation. They also tend to stay longer -- a California state tourism agency study found that Chinese visitors

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-35945601250708266552008-01-01T01:54:00.000+08:002008-01-01T01:55:25.139+08:00

Beijing is like an athlete trying to get into shape by walking on a treadmill yet eating double cheeseburgers at the same time. Polluting factories have been moved or closed. But auto emissions are rising as the city adds up to 1,200 new cars and trucks every day. Dirty, coal-burning furnaces have been replaced, lowering the city’s sulfur dioxide emissions. But fine-particle pollution has been

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-8020636080838269672007-12-31T09:05:00.000+08:002007-12-31T09:07:12.820+08:00

China's political stability may be more fragile than thought. The country faces huge domestic challenges -- an aging population lacking any form of social security, wholesale problems in the financial system that dwarf those revealed in the U.S. sub-prime loan mess and the breakdown of its health system. These problems are as big as ever, but China has fewer resources to meet them than we

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-30580502401315067502007-12-31T09:02:00.000+08:002007-12-31T09:03:26.554+08:00

The most important story to come out of Washington recently had nothing to do with the endless presidential campaign. And although the media largely ignored it, the story changes the world.The story's unlikely source was the staid World Bank, which published updated statistics on the economic output of 146 countries. China's economy, said the bank, is smaller than it thought.About 40%

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-60380532601880603122007-12-05T14:53:00.000+08:002007-12-05T14:57:17.551+08:00

Here is an amazing success story (so far).And there is room for many more schools like the SIAS International University in Henan, China.Nine years ago, Chen launched SIAS International University with less than $2 million, 250 students and a healthy dose of gumption. Today, the school has more than 16,000 students and nearly 50 buildings -- including a Roman amphitheater, French and Italian

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-23815780876853348442007-09-17T13:32:00.000+08:002007-09-17T13:36:39.856+08:00

Some nice reflections from this LA Times writer on the transformation Beijing has undergone over the past ten years. From my experience, it is hard for a westerner to comprehend the pace and scale of change in China. It is so unlike anything our societies have experienced or are capable of.I found Beijing far more electrifying than Paris, unrecognizable from the city I had visited 10 years ago..

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-64241868426045190632007-09-14T05:03:00.000+08:002007-09-14T05:05:52.831+08:00

In LA, 53% of people speak a language other than English at home. The data are part of a census report on social, economic and housing characteristics in the U.S. Nationwide, almost 20% of people over age 5 spoke a language other than English at home in 2006.Some smaller Southern California communities recorded even higher percentages than Los Angeles, including East L.A. (91%), El Monte (83%),

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-36166571528275591912007-09-03T09:50:00.000+08:002007-09-03T09:54:53.354+08:00

Interesting statistic about the differences between the American and Chinese gambling public. While Macau recently passed Las Vegas in producing more gambling revenue, Las Vegas has over 7 TIMES as many hotel rooms, and is probably better know as an entertainment capitol these days than just as a gambling destination.As the Chinese grow in affluence, will their appetite for the whole

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7082655.post-26376117806525256252007-08-30T06:49:00.000+08:002007-08-30T06:55:31.960+08:00

One environmentalist argues that a key to fighting global warming is to use more wood products, stimulating the planting of more new trees. He says that young trees absorb more carbon dioxide than old trees.To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete,

Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00597030082166393619noreply@blogger.com0