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Prosperity to All and to All a Good Night! Ba Ba Ba

By on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | 2 Comments

Three Clicks to Prosperity

auspicious sunset 8/8/08

Beijing air got tested the good old fashioned way—by the marathon runners. Of all the athletes, everyone agreed that they were the ones most likely to keel over dead from exposure to Carbon Monoxide and small particle pollutants. Marathon runners breathe more times than the normal person, plus they need a ton more oxygen in their cells to keep those legs a-pumping.

Speaking of pollution, the Chinese lucked out. Happy to say, those three number 8’s (8/8/08) conjured up a few clear rays on the Beijing Olympics just like they were supposed to. A midnight storm washed the dirt out of Sunday’s morning air, just in time for the Men’s Marathon. The fact is, Beijing air was clean enough for an Olympic record: Sammy Wansiru of Kenya finished in two hours 6.32 minutes.

Rumors have it that the world record holder Haile Gebrselassie wished he could have been there. The Ethiopian legend withdrew in March because he feared that his lungs might suffer permanent damage and at the time this cast quite a pallor on the competition.

Mengzhi (China Daily Online) was one of the many who commented on Gebrselassie’s decision to boycott their Olympics: China is a free country . Anyone chooses NOT to come or run is going to miss out . China regrets such silly scams but cannot do anything about it . We respect all points of views and stands. Less world beaters , more medals for China . Who is missing out then ?

Not the Chinese divers, they’re going 8 for 8 in the gold medal department: He, Guo, Chen, Wang, Wang, Wu, Xin and Lin. (Yes there are two Wangs.) And I’ll lay odds these Chinese boys and girls are all believers in the power of Ba (8).

I’ll also bet they didn’t have to be pushed off the 10 meter diving platform, either, like little Tom Daley did. Tom, Tom, Mr. Daley’s son is that darling, fourteen-year-old Olympic diver from Great Britain, you know the one that all the little girls are swooning over. “… there will be no serious girlfriends until after the Games,” he says.

Back to pushing little kids off high places: Sad to say, I did use that word, but it’s not mine. According to our informative Olympic host, Bob Costas, most of the divers, including Tom Daley, had to be pushed off that high thirty+foot platform the first 8 or 10 times. And, oh yea, did I mention that they were in tears. Bob Costas went on to say that this practice is not uncommon, but Thomas Finchum, the American diver, didn’t have to be pushed.

Gee, it’s nice to know there are adults all over the world who will push scared little kids off a three-story platform. You just have to be pretty optimistic about their chances, I guess.

Speaking of pessimists, some experts way back when were saying that folks who competed outdoors in the Olympics were gonna die. They obviously didn’t believe in the power of Ba. But I’ll tell you who really believes…Michael Phelps. At this point, folks, he more than believes and so do we. Happy to say, this phenom (soon to be on cereal boxes) walked away with eight golds. Phelps is a god, though. We need help.

So I’ve hatched a plan for the rest of us mortals to attain the luck of the three 8’s. I advise all to return to this posting on the eighth day of every month for the remainder of 2008 and click three times to auspicious prosperity while repeating Ba Ba Ba.

Happy 8’s,

Laura signing off.

p.s. Check out what Chris says about the daily 8’s.


ba

Speaking of fateful!

Power To The People Right On

By on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | No Comments

No, this is not today’s picture of a Mount Shasta sunrise. I was just nostalgic for the good ole days is all.


Moving on. What do Beijing and Northern California have in common? Answer: Polluted air. While our bad air stems from wildfires, Beijing’s is the result of automobile and factory emissions mixed with construction dust.

The Chinese government is racing like hell to get Beijing’s air under control, though, or, at least all information concerning the data under control. Meanwhile, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) holds its neutral stance: The Olympics is a sports event, they say, and clean air is political. (cough cough)

But many are criticizing the IOC for such a lackadaisical approach to the health of athletes. Seven years ago when China won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics, the People’s Republic made at least two promises—clean air and full internet access to foreign journalists. Have they lived up to either?

Since the IOC is biting its wimpy tongue, the only accurate reorting of Beijing’s pollution levels hails from the Brits. Naturally, China is not allowing any contrary info to penetrate its Great Firewall, and this includes any BBC websites that mention poor Beijing’s poor air quality. Wonder of all wonders! In one fell swoop, China has reneged on two promises—clean air and free internet access!
How do they do it…those inscrutable Chinese officials? How do they block free internet access to their millions of online citizens, not to mention 23,000 foreign journalists? Answer: They treat their citizens like children.

Government filters work pretty much the same as home filters that stop children from accessing porn. And do these watchful parent-figures ground their naughty citizens for sneaking past filters? Yes, in a manner of speaking they do: Two to four years in a state prison, where, if the bad boys and girls happen to die, their bodies can be harvested for spare parts. Ugh, ugh ugh not a happy thought.

In his article The Great Firewall of China, Stephen Hutcheon reports that The Great Firewall of China - or the Golden Shield Project is solely aimed at keeping criticism of the Chinese Government out of print. Not as difficult as you might imagine, though, since almost all internet traffic between China and the outside world squeezes through one of three points near Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Hutcheon goes on to say that content filtering technologies primarily rely on lists of banned sites identified by their unique internet protocol (IP) addresses. Plus Chinese offiicials are hip to the use of keywords. Can’t you just see all those millions of Websites biting the delete dust at the border?

In the “Atlantic Monthly” (February 2008 issue), James Fallows, reported that the Chinese have also installed a device called a “tapper”, or “network sniffer”, which copies every single bit of data that comes in through these three gateways, shunting it through the surveillance computers for inspection. “If the data fails to pass muster, the censor’s computer interrupts the process of connecting the user’s computer to the website, resulting in what is known as a 404 error: “site not found”.

And it all happens in a split second, Folks.

With this in mind, I am offering the accurate pollution levels for the city of Beijing, as collected by James Reynolds of the BBC . I can just see our hero roaming Beijing with his trusty handheld device taking air samples. Carry on, James. We of the free world are watching.

Graph

And now for something completely different supplied courtesy of the “People’s Daily Online”. I would like to close with this opinion of our very own Nancy Pelosi.

“ Once in a long while in History you get an anti Chinese Like Pelosi who have never experience spritual beings and culture. So, when she met the Delai Lama her feet got sweep off and she is drowned by an usual human beings in saffron robes. She went under her magical spell and is not in her usual sanity. A person of her standing suddenly became an illiterate and no history of what the Delai Lama came from. To her from heaven. So, to her just look down on her as a piece of shit garbage.”

To ameliorate the hate of that last image, I offer for your delight this beautiful dahlia that reminds me of a Chinese Chrysanthemum. Chris brought it home for me Friday in a bouquet. How would you like a SendOutCard of this blossom to arrive in your snail-mailbox? It can be arranged. I have contacts with The Great Printer in Salt Lake City.

Laura signing off.

p.s. with this internet post, I have probably sacrificed all visits to China. Now there’s a strange thought…

Where There’s Smoke, there’s Mount Shasta, Beijing, and Cotinus Coggygria

By on Monday, July 7th, 2008 | 1 Comment

The 233rd Fourth of July is history, and the atmosphere around Mount Shasta is finally clearing from all the fires and fireworks. We always blow ours off over water (Lake Siskiyou), but some Northern California communities postponed their sky celebrations.

In spite of small-particle pollution and the dangers of strenuous outdoor activities, the city of Mount Shasta had its annual ‘run-walk’ on July 4th–proceeds going to beautify the downtown area. Billed as The Largest Small Town Walk in America, this event of roughly 5000 participants might be the biggest in the world. Happy to say, the air cleared just in time, but the mountain was just not quite its usual self, I’m afraid.

Better than the Olympic city of Beijing, though. Checkout the air quality for all the poor athletes who will be struggling to suck down oxygen. Does it look dismal or what! Some are refusing to participate, and who can blame them? The sulfur, lead, particulate matter and carbon dioxide levels wouldn’t kill them right away probably, but it might ruin their lungs for life.

Back to Mount Shasta. Most recently, the Mountain Runners (sponsors of the annual Run/Walk event) donated $20,000 worth of lights to hang from the trees in the ‘business district’ of our town, one idea being that the added illumination would make our little speck of 3500 folks visible from space. Hmmm…no offense, decision makers, but that doesn’t sound like the loftiest goal in the world. Besides, no amount of artificial lights could have made Northern California visible from space last week or this week. (I know, I know, I’m back to the smoke again.)

Allow me to wax poetic and redeem myself with a more pleasant smoky subject (no, not Smokey the Bear)–smoke as in bush or tree (cotinus coggygria):

How do I love thee, my smokCloseup of a Smokebushetree, ‘Nordine’! Let me count the ways: Not only does this variety hold her purplish-red color in the hot sun, but she also gets coppery towards Fall. Not fussy about where she puts down her roots, a sun lover and very tolerant of hot dry gravelly soil, ‘Nordine’ is described as the hardiest, purple-leaved form by those in the know. They also say she can surely endure the temperatures of zone 5(-20 degrees F to -10 degrees F), and sometimes even zone 4.

All this description doesn’t come close to the reality of cotinus coggygria, so I have inculded a shot of her luxurious summer bloom. This time I am having the Great Printer make a card and send it to my father as a Get-Well SendOutCard. He’s feeling poorly, but on the mend.

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