Michael Armacost, member of the President Jimmy Carter’s administration for East Asian and Chinese affairs, the former US ambassador to Japan 1989-1993, and Director of the Brookings Institute – a Washington think tank 1995-2002, now a senior fellow at Stanford University gave a talk with the above title on July 30, 2010. It is a level-headed, even-handed, and dispassionate analysis of US-China relations in the past and for the future. Residents of any country tends to view the world through the filters of the media of their own country. Just try to listen to the reports of the same world news from CNN, BBC, Deutsche-Wella, and CCTV, you will get an idea. Thus, it is worthwhile sometime to see the world from a different viewpoint. I recommend this talk highly. It can be downloaded from http://fsi.stanford.edu/events/how_should_we_think_about_china

I mentioned in two earlier blog articles that one of my favorite features of New York Times and the Sunday magazine is the ethicist column by Randy Cohen who answers everyday ethical dilemma faced by many of us with humor , honesty, and often surprising but sage advices.

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The self-help magazine –BottomLine:Retirement – recently featured the following interview with the billionaire real estate tycoon and TV personality, Donald Trump on

Donald Trump's 6 Secrets to Keeping Your Edge in Life

By Donald Trump

The Trump Organization

Trump has a flame buoyant personality. You don’t have to agree with his style or what he advocated. But what he says below has quite a bit of truth and worth considering. I have added my own comments where appropriate in red.

Earlier I wrote the blog article “How to be a postdoc in the US? http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=11258 , This article can be consider an extension. Because of improving and wealthy conditions of the Chinese economy, more and more scholars are self or government financed. When you don’t ask your sponsors for money, the problem becomes simpler. However, even if the Chinese government provides living expense and wages, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THERE IS NO COST TO THE SPONSOR AND INSTITUTION INVOLVED, AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE WELCOMED WITH OPEN ARMS. If someone provides you with an official invitation and status as a visitor, the following costs must still be shouldered by the sponsor:

This is the nineth unedited article by my grandson Daniel

On the Beginning Stage of Life

Having read my grandfather’s insights on the end stage of life http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=338821, I thought that I would try and give my perspective on the beginning stage of life, such as it is. Thus this article will be a bit more free flowing, and I hope, humorous. It is intended to be less serious then my grandfather’s article, but no less honest.

In an earlier article

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I mentioned in passing that the program manager of the US National Science Foundation on system sciences reportedly said the title of this blog article. Although I thought I provided an explanation of the meaning and implication of this utterance at the time, there were a number of critical comments about my article taking me to task for passing on such a depressing remark.

The FF Fraternity Centennial 1910-2010

Fraternities were an American College invention. They had their heydays in the first half of the 20th century. It is a mixture of male bonding, college drinking party and antics, and shades of a secret society (like the Free Masons). In olden days membership is by invitation and must go through an initiation procedure involving physical punishment and ritual which on rare occasions can result in accidental death. Members of a fraternity are known to each other as brothers. Chinese students studying in America during that period formed their own fraternities for mutual support. There were all together four Chinese fraternities – Alpha Lambda or AL, Rho Psi, PL, and the only one not using a Greek name as tradition dictated, the FF Fraternity. As college fraternities fall into disfavor beginning in the 70s, they disappeared one by

The above Chinese subtitle which contains a lot of truth is a well known saying about life in the United States. Yet the will to survive is a basic instinct of human beings. As one approaches the end stage of life, one cannot help but face this somewhat depressing thought. In the past several years, quite a few of my lifelong friends passed away, some unexpectedly too soon, others more or less expected. Just before we departed for our annual trip to China/Tsinghua, another friend died after a long illness at age of 84 (the doctors privately gave him six months, but he lasted one month). He had a family, wife, five children, many grand children and lived a full life. Everyone was still talking about him returning home from hospital. Plans were underway about remodeling his home so that he can live out his remaining time comfortably with assistance in his own home. But I gu