Planck's Constant

Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
Photo Credit: Kimberly White/Reuters

"No force can stop the torch relay of the Olympic Games," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, The Associated Press reported. "We are confident the torch relay of the Beijing Olympic Games will succeed." Someday, unless we wake up, the Chinese will be saying the same thing about their control of the world. Beth at Blue Star Chronicles relays to us that according to the Chinese, the Olympic torch relay is going fantastically. That's interesting, considering that stops in London and Paris descended into chaos because of anti-China protests.

And today, the Olympic torch embarks on its only U.S. relay in San Francisco as the city braces for massive protests.

Meanwhile, three protesters climbed the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to hang Pro-Tibet banners that read: "One World, One Dream," and "Free Tibet 08."

Full Story: "China: No force can stop the Olympic torch relay" »

Great minds do not come from Genetics. If it did, we would have heard great things from Albert Einstein, Jr. and all the other Jr's of geniuses from our past. Who knows if Einstein's entire genius did not come from a simple observation when he was 5 years old: Albert's father showed him a pocket compass. Albert then realized that that some force in empty space was moving the needle.

A recent article about some scary future possibilities lends the first half of the title to my present post:

TCS Daily,
2 Oct 2007,
A Thousand Chinese Einsteins Every Year

Humankind may be changed radically by the recently developed technique allowing the safe gathering of thousands of immature eggs from a woman's ovarian tissue. This technique combined with cheap DNA sequencing and embryo selection will soon allow parents to multiply their newborn children's intellectual potential.
...
Embryo selection gets even more interesting when we consider how a nation such as China might use it. Imagine that in ten years China forces all its college students to get genetic tests. Students with intelligence genes in the top 1% of the top 1% of humankind are then forced to donate sperm or eggs. China then uses the sperm and eggs to create a billion embryos each year. The genetic intellectual potential of all these embryos is checked. Those in the top 10,000 are implanted into women. Each of these embryos has the intellectual potential to be in the top one-billionth of humankind. Now because of environmental factors many of these embryos won't turn into intellectual titans. But let's say that one in ten does. This means that each year 1,000 people with the scientific ability of Einstein will be born. By 2035 they will become adults and start doing scientific research. I imagine these Einsteins will be rather helpful to China's economy and military.

Full Story: "A Thousand Chinese Einsteins Every Year - if they are Jewish" »

In my post The Portuguese Reconquista and New Jersey Bookies I state that the Portuguese established the first and longest-lived global empire in history. In 1498 Vasco da Gama set out from Lisbon in search of spices. He came upon the center of the India-China spice trade at the Malabarian Coast. Finding Chinese Tea made Portugal a major maritime power for more than two hundred years.

In those days, China had very little competition for tea and so had little incentive to find shortcuts in its production and handling. Today, Chinese entrepreneurs can make millions by allowing inferior production methods or closing one's eyes to tainted and cheaper ingredients finding its way into the final product.

Zheng Xiaoyu, the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration, is seen in a meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing. [Photo: AP]

China, miffed that America refuses to buy its tainted and poisoned products, has suspended imports from several major U.S. meat processors.

Frozen poultry products from Tyson Foods Inc. were "contaminated" with salmonella, according to the Chinese General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which agency obviously does not do Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine on its own locally-produced foods.

The agency also banned frozen chicken feet from Sanderson Farms, Inc. because of an alleged residue found of an anti-parasite drug, as well as frozen pork ribs from Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. containing a leanness-enhancing feed additive.

Here are my observations:
1) It is obvious that American food does not have enough poisons and infectious material to be allowed to be sold to the general Chinese public. To let in healthy products in China would place the local businesses at a terrific disadvantage.
2) And even if our food was really tainted, now that they executed Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of their food and drug safety agency, there is no one around to take bribes to allow the stuff to come in.

Full Story: "China Beats Our Meat" »

MSNBC,
Consumer Reports finds Americans more worried about food safety

WASHINGTON - U.S. consumers overwhelmingly support stricter food labeling laws, with 92 percent of Americans wanting to know which country produced the food they are buying, a consumer magazine said on Tuesday.

I don't understand - why bother? Americans don't know where Argentina is anyway. And if the problem all about worries about China, then I suggest we don't import food, or anything that impacts your health from China at all. Their inspections are even more worthless than ours: The UN's WHO says at least 300 million Chinese are affected by food-borne illness every year. After all, what's a few million less Chinese anyway to the government there?

As far as food from other countries, some foods pass through three or more countries so I'm not sure of the utility of knowing the food went from Zimbabwe to Chile to Honduras before reaching here.

Full Story: "Americans Want Geographic labels on Food" »

I have noticed for some time that I have not been receiving any traffic from China, although I do get a half-dozen or so visitors from Hong Kong every week. Just to make sure, I clicked on the Great Firewall of China and took the test; sure enough, Planck's Constant is banned in Red China.

Full Story: "Banned in China" »