Hangzhou Lovin’

I found out one of the reasons why the chinese think I am nervous all the time. It’s because I am a sweaty bastard! They see me up there teaching class, beads of sweat on my brow, and they think, “no one in China sweats that much, he must be really nervous and shy”. But no, it’s just me and my overactive glands, it seems I sweat more in my sleep than a chinese person does in a year. I need to move to the serengeti where my extra sweating power will allow me to stand the midday heat and go out and scavenge for food while the lions are resting. On a related note, the chinese appear to have no body hair. It’s very cool for chinese men to have the top botons on their shirts undone, but none of them have body hair on their chests. I wonder if they will be scared if I show them my furry pecs. As for my musk, god only knows what they think of that. I just might be to much of a man for China.

I posted this on the Maxspeak site in response to a post by Haruspex, that was a thoughtful pro war argument. I think they are good anti war points, but far from the only ones that can be made.

Quick comments.
1. In order to prevent Iraq from gaining “regional hegemony over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia” as Haruspex puts it, all we need to do is deter Saddam’s ability to make Nuclear weapons. He’s had Chem and Bio WMDs for years and they haven�t helped him. Stopping him from making nukes is easier than stopping him from making any WMDs, and I would think could be done through diplomacy. Especially considering that the most likely source for nuclear material and know how would come from other countries (Former Soviet states and North Korea come to mind).
2. As for the pros and cons, the largest con in my mind is that attacking Iraq will raise the likelihood of another Al Qeada attack Simply by creating an entire nation of displaced and potentially very angry Arabs. Also, when do you think it will be easier for Al Qeada to get a hold of Iraq�s Chemical and Biological weapons, when they are being hidden by Saddam or when they are being protected by some easily bribed guards after a US attack destabilizes the country. In order to equal the Iraqi WMD strike �what if�s� of the pro-war side, the anti-war side should ask if the war people will be able to live with themselves when a VX attack hits New York, and it ends up the attack was planned in Pakistan while we were mucking around in Iraq.

Dudes, new get your war on’s are up. If you don’t like it then I don’t wanna be your friend.

Can someone email me if they actually read this waist of bandwidth that I call my blog?

One last thing, Chinese girls like blue eyes, hehehe…

I’m listening to the new beck album over at his site, excellent. More mellow than midnight vultures, but still kicking ass. You got to give him your email address but beside that its free.

On a completely different note, I played basketball with the college team over hear. They were all better than me but much worse than decent players in the US. They had some moves and a guy who could shoot well. I just felt like a dum ass who couldn’t represent for the U S of A. The crowd went wild when I made my only basket of the day, an ugly layup. The chinese are ridiculously good at ping pong. I tried to play the vice president of the college yesterday. I couldn’t even return one of his serves. I think instead of learning to speak chinese I am going to get good at ping pong and dominate the weak american players.

Scary article in the Asian times… It says that Iraq could very well have Nuclear weapons. There is certainly enough unaccounted material left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Should we go to war if the actually do have a bomb and not just to prevent them from getting one…

I’ve been reading a bunnch of political blogs this afternoon (while i should be learning chinese…) and basically I’ve been bouncing back and forth between MaxSpeaks, an excellent lefty blog, some big hitters post there, and following his links to pro war blogs, (here are two, here and here). They get all into the Intricacies of the argument, but I think it’s a lot simplier. The anti war people should be pounding home how much this war will cost in money (1-2% of the GDP for the war, plus the money to rebuild Iraq) and in potential live. The way for Saddam to win this war is to maximise casualties, american and civilian. Plus the complete unknown of the political fallout after the war. The pro war people seem to think that a destabalized middle east is a good thing because somehow a jeffersonian democracy will emerge from the ruble. They seem to forget the fact that the strongest opposition groups in the middle east are islamic fundamentalist groups and that we would be replacing “corrupt regimes freindly with the US to curropt regimes that hate the US,” (i stole this qoute from somewhere, but I can’t remember). Not to mention the huge problems we are going to have between turkey and our Kurdish allies. What do we do if they start to fight? All this to stop Saddam from building WMDs. I think its clear that he can be contained diplomatically. Saddam is rather erratic but he isn’t Osama Bin Laden. He has an incentive to stay in power. If we give him enough space to maintain power he can be convinced to not build WMDs. This will probably involve weapons inspectors and political pressur. Plus good intelligence which might not happen.

If Saddam is a bad boy… I’m not sure, i do know that one of our main prioties should be to get international support to help pay for the mess of a war in Iraq.

This article by Joshua Micah Marshall (Check out his excellent Blog, talking points memo) is the best pro war argument I have read so far. However I still think a war against Iraq will be far to costly. But I gotta go to bed so thats all I’m gonna say.

I went down to the english department tonight and one of the cooler chinese english teachers was watching a Kung Fu TV show on the computer. (The chinese watch tv shows and movies on co,puters a lot more than americans do). It was this crazy show about this dude with seven wives. Like a lot of chinese drama, it was a bizarre mix of comedy, action and drama. In the end I guess the main charecter was killed by his best friend and all his wives were widowed. I can’t say I understand what that says about Chinese culture at all.

On that same note, I had my students write short essays about their families. It was wierd how similar they all were. Almost all of them contained some form of the phrases, “My family is the most loving in the world,” “My parents work very hard to put me through college” and “when I am done with college I will help support my parents.” The most notable exception was one student whose name is “Bush,” He wrote that his family life was personal and told me that i should read some obscure indian philospher. Good for him. As for the other students while its nice that they want to support their families I find it hard to believe that they are all so nice. A kind of cultural relativism is kind of forced on you over here were to get along you need to say, well if it works for them its ok, It’s just not how I would go about it.

I’m starting to ramble so one more point. Everybody in China thinks I’m shy, and while this is true to some extent I’m getting sick of people telling me to open up. For one thing Chinese students are much more shy than american students It is like pulling nails to get them to talk in class, even when it’s a subject they clearly like. (When I ask a question I usaully see a see of black hair as my students look at their desks). In class i don’t think I’m shy at all. I have to do all the talking and it seems like at least half the class is paying attention. That is pretty good when you consider that only about a qauter understands what I am saying. My suspicion is that the LaoWai that were here last year were sterotypical outgoing american liberal college students. While I come from the tradition of taciturn, ornery and silent midewesterners. I don’t like to be touched and I’m not gonna talk to you if I don’t have anything to say. I just get the feeling they want me to be their performing monkey.

New This Modern World Comic up. If you don’t read it, what the hell is wrong with you?

Just wrote an email to eliot. I gave him my ideas about what should happen to the Men’s Cross Country team at Macalester.

Sounds like you guys are doing pretty well this season, but i heard about Steve from summer so that sucks. You probably already know this but I’ll give you my advice on what you should do. First, you might be screwed for recruiting for next year, but maybe if you can get a new guy ready by spring he can get some recruiting done. Second, Steve must be involved in hiring his replacement. Nobody else in the department has the kind of connections he does. Thrid, Members from the team must have the major decision about who will be your next coach. This way even if the atheletic department is pissed at Steve you can still get his input. Thrid, you should get Ben Knudson involved somehow if you can. I’m sure he’d be glad to help and he could add some perspective on how the team has been screwed. I think for the past four men’s cross country coaches the average time of coaching has been about 2-3 years. Thats bullshit. The main thing is to make sure Steve is involved because he knows the running community. If left to Jordan et al. they will probably just make Megan Kelly the head mens coach. Y’all have a good team so I think you will be alright.

I didn’t say that the men’s team needs a full time coach, but that should go without saying. That it dosn’t shows the stupidity of the whole program. Give the damn team a full time head coach!