Lee Kuan Yew - NBC

Fire in Babylon

The incident

Rebel Scum

Wardian Cases

Duckworth Lewis Calculator

Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=7QPFzg6nt0EC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=indonesian+ocean+sukarno&source=bl&ots=yOPQC36O6s&sig=LpgdPvcl_ZiLDTSneEfs6atE7pI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YtcRVfz3K6i2mAWr8YDACA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=indonesian%20ocean%20sukarno&f=false

The Manchu Alphabet

The Manchu alphabet was commissioned in 1599 by the Manchu leader Nurhaci (1559-1626), the founder of the Manchu state. Its script is vertically written and taken from the Mongolian alphabet (which in turn derives from Aramaic via Uyghur and Sogdian). Although Manchu does not have the kind of grammatical gender that many Indo-European languages do, some gender-related words in Manchu are distinguished by different stem vowels; in such cases, "a"s are sometimes used to indicate masculine ones, as in ama "father", and "e"s are sometimes used to indicate feminine ones, as in eme "mother". While the phonetics are based on Jurchen, an earlier Manchu script. The alphabet was modified slightly in 1632.

In 1644 the Manchus conquered China and established the Ch'ing (Qing) dynasty, which lasted until 1911. For the first 200 years or so of the Ch'ing dynasty, Manchu was the main language of government in China and served as a lingua franca. By the mid 19th century many of the Manchus had adopted Chinese as their first language, however they continued to produce Manchu version of Chinese documents until the end of the dynasty and for sometime afterwards.Notable features

• Type of writing system: alphabet
• Direction of writing: left to right in vertical columns running from top to bottom.
• Most letters have several different forms: initial, medial and final, which are used at the beginning, middle and end of a word respectively. The vowels also have isolated forms.
• Some letters have different shapes depending on which vowel comes before and/or after them.

Used to write

Manchu, a member of the Tungusic group of Altaic languages. There are currently about 10 million Manchus living mainly in north-eastern China, of whom about 100 speak Manchu and only 20 can read and write it. Most speak only Mandarin.

Most Manchus now speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native and semi-speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Although the Xibe language, with 40,000 speakers, is in almost every respect identical to Manchu,

Manchu alphabet

Vowels

Note

• The second final form of e is used after k, g and h.

Consonants

Notes

• The first medial form of n is used before vowels; the second is used before consonants
• The first medial form of ng is used before i, o, u and ū; the second is used before e and i
• The first medial form of k is used before a, o and ū; the second is used before consonants
• The first initial and medial forms of t are used before a, o and i; the second initial and medial forms are used before e, u ū; the third medial form is used before consonants
• First initial and medial forms of d are used before a, o and i; the second initial and medial forms are used before e, u and ū
• The first initial and medial forms of f are used before a and e; the second initial and medial forms are used before i, o, u and ū

Numerals

Syllables

Sample text

Translation

Following his advice, when the army was about to enter the town, he abandoned the town and fled. Akim Bek volunteered to handle the affairs, so he did the duty on behalf of the General. He had been to the capital city to present himself before the Emperor. His estate in the city and property in Kashgar, were used to provide the people living in Shikago, left in the capital city, or inherited by his son. He inherited the title of the Duke of Assisting the Nation, and was bestowed the hereditary title of Akim Bek. His son inherited the hereditary title of Akim Bek.

Bamboo Wars

I'm Coming Virgina

III Years

Teutonic

THE MAOISTS AND MODERN CHINA

On the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth in December 2013, the whole of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, led by new installed leader Xi Jinping, attended commemorations held in Beijing. Commentators inside and outside China were calling Xi a new kind of Mao, noting his eagerness to use some of Mao’s political techniques to mobilise people, and often referring to the supreme leader of the People’s Republic from 1949 to 1976 in highly complementary ways. 

As I try to show in this paper, Mao Zedong’s legacy today remains profound, but complex. That so many were critical of Xi’s willingness to refer to the former leader is one indication of this. Mao was perhaps the modern leader of China who forged the deepest emotional link with people in the country. But he was also someone associated with campaigns from the 1950s onwards that carried huge social costs. The most epic of these, the Cultural Revolution, was one that Xi himself suffered in, becoming a send down youth in 1969 and moving from Beijing down to the Shaanxi countryside. Many, many others have similar experiences. 

Those that appeal to the Chairman these days tend to do so not because, like Xi, they want to make a clear link between pre and post-1978 history, when the reform and opening up process is meant to have started, but because the feel that modern China has lost its path. It has forsaken the Utopian, idealistic goals that Mao set it, allowing elites to re-emerge, and the Party to end up as the sort of self-serving, bureaucratic entity that he strove so much to avoid it turning into. The language contained in documents like the statement put out after the Third Plenum in Beijing in October 2013 of `perfecting the market’ in China and saying that a free market is necessary for implementation of socialism with Chinese characteristics alienates and antagonises them. They want public ownership of assets restored, and a welfare system that covers everyone and drives for equality imposed again. They feel that while some have gained form the post 1978 deal, there are many more Chinese who have suffered, been pushed into poverty and injustice, and betrayed.
Some of these voices find their way onto the internet, and have social influence. I look at these in this paper, and try to answer just how influential and representative they are. For the question of Mao and his continuing impact, the answer is partly that he continues to escape the boundaries that people claiming his name try to put on him. For this reason, understanding him and those that try to speak in his name even to this day, is important. I hope this study helps a little in understand just why the red sun of Mao Zedong is still very much alive in some Chinese people’s hearts, and why people as senior as Xi chose to appeal to Mao when they conduct politics in the era when China has become the sort of economic and political powerhouse that Mao could only ever dream about.

Foie gras this...

'He who sells what isn't his'n. Must buy it back or go to pris'n' - Drew

The Lays of Ancient Rome

XXVI 

But the Consul's brow was sad, 

And the Consul's speech was low, 

And darkly looked he at the wall, 

And darkly at the foe. 

"Their van will be upon us 

Before the bridge goes down; 

And if they once may win the bridge, 

What hope to save the town?" 

XXVII 

Then out spake brave Horatius, 

The Captain of the Gate: 

"To every man upon this earth 

Death cometh soon or late. 

And how can man die better 

Than facing fearful odds, 

For the ashes of his fathers, 

And the temples of his gods,

Formidable

Cross section of Kowloon Walled City

In the beginning was the word. And the word was 'hey, you.'

Hachikō

The Metropolis of Tomorrow

'If you have nothing to tell us, but that on the banks of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, one barbarian has been succeeded by another barbarian, in what respect do you benefit the public?' - Voltaire

Daniel King: powerplay 18: The Sicilian Najdorf - a Repertoire for black

La Bataille de Shanghai 1937

Etgar Keret Reads “Chablis” by Donald Barthelme

https://soundcloud.com/newyorker/etgar-keret-reads-chablis-by-donald-barthelme#t=5:33

FROST/WHITLAM

KLF burn a million quid

Zhang Guangyu’s Manhua Journey to the West 西遊漫記

http://www.nickstember.com/manhua-journey-west-part-1-6/

Financially, the paper...

Financially, the paper is quite healthy. The paper's timberlands, mining interests, pulp and paper operations, book, magazine, corrugated-box, and greeting-card divisions, film, radio, television, and cable companies, and data-processing and satellite-communications groups are all flourishing, with over-all return on invested capital increasing at about eleven per cent a year. Compensation of the three highest-paid officers and directors last year was $399,500, $362,700, and $335,400 respectively, exclusive of profit-sharing and pension-plan accruals.

But top management is discouraged and saddened, and middle management is drinking too much. Morale in the newsroom is fair, because of the recent raises, but the shining brows of the copy boys, traditional emblems of energy and hope, have begun to display odd, unattractive lines. At every level, even down into the depths of the pressroom, where the pressmen defiantly wear their square dirty folded-paper caps, people want management to stop what it is doing before it is too late.


The new VDT machines have hurt the paper, no doubt about it. The people in the newsroom don't like the machines. (A few say they like the machines but these are the same people who like the washrooms.) When the machines go down, as they do, no infrequently, the people in the newsroom laugh and cheer. The executive editor has installed one-way glass in his office door, and stands behind it looking out over the newsroom, fretting and groaning. Recently the paper ran the same stock tables every day for a week. No one noticed, no one complained.

Middle management has implored top management to alter its course. Top management has responded with postdated guarantees, on a sliding scale. The Guild is off in a corner, whispering. The pressmen are holding an unending series of birthday parties commemorating heroes of labor. Reporters file their stories as usual, but if they are certain kinds of stories they do not run. A small example: the paper id not run a Holiday Weekend Death Toll story after Labor Day this year, the first time since 1926 no Holiday Weekend Death Toll story appeared in the paper after Labor Day (and total was, although not a record, a substantial one).

Some elements of the staff are not depressed. The paper's very creative real-estate editor has been a fountain of ideas, and his sections full of color pictures of desirable living arrangements, are choked with advertising and make the SUnday paper fat, fat, fat, fat. More food writers have been hired, and more clothes writers, and more furniture writers, and more plant writers. The bridge, whist, skat, cribbage, domino, and vingt-et-un columnists are very popular.

The Editors' Caucus has once again applied to middle management for relief, and has once again been promised it (but middle management has Glenfiddich on its breath, even at breakfast). Top management's polls say that sixty-five percent of the readers "want movies," and feasibility studies are being conducted. Top management acknowledges, over long lunches at good restaurants, that readers are wrong to "want movies" but insists that morality cannot be legislated. The newsroom has been insulated (with products from the company's Echotex division) so that the epople in the newsroom can no longer hear the sounds in the streets.

The paper's editorials have been subcontracted to Texas Instruments, and the obituaries to Nabisco, so that the staff will have "more time to think." The foreign desk is turning out language lessons ("Yo temo que Isabel no venga,""I am afraid that Isabel will not come"). There was an especially lively front page on Tuesday. The No. 1 story was pepperoni — a useful and exhaustive guide. It ran right next to the slimming-your-troublesome-thighs story, with pictures.

Top management has vowed to stop what it is doing, not now but soon, soon. A chamber orchestra has been formed among the people in the newsroom, and we play Haydn until the sun comes up.

D. Barthelme

Doc, note I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.

This Land is Mine