Tomorrow live at 5pm on Resonance 104.4FM, Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge looks at China's cultural and scientific contributions and inventions. Guests: Elizabeth Lawrence and Paul Anderson.
Presented by Anna Chen. Charles Shaar Murray rides shotgun.
Tomorrow's Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge is themed around China's cultural and scientific contributions to the west from inventions such as the seed drill, hydraulics, the iron plough, the horse harness and gunpowder to music performance. Paul Anderson takes us through the historical political upheavals that have returned China to top position as the world's leading technoculture. Elizabeth Lawrence talks about Chinese contributions in western music. (Musique Concr矇te is postponed).
Listen live (click on the Resonance FM widget in the sidebar) or afterwards online.
Smarter than a lot of people I could mention, Kanzi the Bonobo chimp makes tools and considers a witty riposte to George Galloway at the same time.
Able to work out how to get to the banana in the box, he can also tell the difference between bad sex etiquette and rape — he just chooses not to put it into practise. He is, after all, a few million years behind us on the evolutionary scale, but what's GG's excuse?
This video is like going back in time and seeing how our ape forefathers started to use tools that would end up giving us Shakespeare and the nuclear bomb.
Looks like we are indeed superfluous to requirements. Soon, the super-rich won't need us for anything any more; not work, our minds, and not even for sex. They have science and technology servicing the onanistic requirements of the Masters of the Universe. Who needs real people when you can have a simulacrum of the real thing?
Human relations break down. Love is lost to us as a species. The weak kill it off in themselves or succumb to illusions of strength through seclusion. And so humanity bites the dust.
The new heroic quest of the Age of Alienation — keeping your capacity for love alive. That's humanity at its most highly evolved.
Looks like we are indeed superfluous to requirements. Soon, the super-rich won't need us for anything any more; not work, our minds, and not even for sex. They have science and technology servicing the onanistic requirements of the Masters of the Universe. Who needs real people when you can have a simulacrum of the real thing?
Human relations break down. Love is lost to us as a species. The weak kill it off in themselves or succumb to illusions of strength through seclusion. And so humanity bites the dust.
The new heroic quest of the Age of Alienation — keeping your capacity for love alive. That's humanity at its most highly evolved.
Is it my imagination or did I just hear Stephen Sackur on BBC Radio 4 asking a rather furtive American scientist about the new "organic matter-eating" combat robot now being developed by the arms corporations?
"Did this mean it could end up eating the flesh of dead (or live!) soldiers in the battlefield?", he asked. "No," came the shaky and utterly unconvincing reply. "That wouldn't be allowed by the Geneva Convention."
Oh, how I laffed. "Be All You Can Be" is now "Eat All You Can Eat".
Remember, boys and gals, the choice is socialism or barbarism. Civilised pundits are already making the arguments for the latter.
All of which reminds me that Caprica, the prequel series to the magnificent Battlestar Galactica, has hit UK TV screens. Episode four next on Sky 1. It all kicks off with a ruthless scientist whose genius daughter has been killed in a terrorist attack. Typical of the creators who enjoy twisting our melons, this is far from your average mawkish tale of grief-stricken loving father. Oh, yes. Review to come later.
President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of pugnacious banker Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff couldn’t have been more controversial, what with Rahmbo’s volunteer service in the Israel Defence Forces, his support of Bush’s Iraq war, and advocacy of compulsory “universal sevice” for all young Americans.
But then Obama nominated New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for commerce secretary, an appointment which pitched Latinos and Asian-Americans against each other. Richardson displayed none of the racial sensitivity he reserves for his Hispanic constituency when he helped prosecute Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, for spying ten years ago.
"This was the major Chinese-American civil rights case in the last 30 years,'' said Albert Wang, a Fremont physician. "And there was a feeling among many Chinese-Americans, particularly in Silicon Valley, that Bill Richardson did a lot to promote the notion that all Chinese-Americans are potential spies.''
"Wen Ho Lee bore the brunt of Richardson's actions, but there were many Chinese-American scientists who felt great fear,'' said Der, who once headed Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco. "Even I got a visit from the FBI, and I'm not a scientist.''
Gee, how was Obama gonna get all the US Asians on board?
Hmmm, how to mollify a substantial minority with financial clout and an eye on political power?
Meanwhile, and entirely unconnected, Obama’s cabinet gets an Asian. It looks like science super-egghead and Nobel Laureate Dr Stephen Chu will be Head of the Department of Energy where his remit is biofuels, a poisoned chalice if ever there was one.
Hated by the big coal producers AND loathed by environmentalists, I don’t fancy Chu's chances.
Madam Miaow says ... Hey, Steve, the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. Doh! No, the flagon with the dragon holds the brew that is true ... Don't trust the gweilo!
President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of pugnacious banker Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff couldn’t have been more controversial, what with Rahmbo’s volunteer service in the Israel Defence Forces, his support of Bush’s Iraq war, and advocacy of compulsory “universal sevice” for all young Americans.
But then Obama nominated New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for commerce secretary, an appointment which pitched Latinos and Asian-Americans against each other. Richardson displayed none of the racial sensitivity he reserves for his Hispanic constituency when he helped prosecute Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, for spying ten years ago.
"This was the major Chinese-American civil rights case in the last 30 years,'' said Albert Wang, a Fremont physician. "And there was a feeling among many Chinese-Americans, particularly in Silicon Valley, that Bill Richardson did a lot to promote the notion that all Chinese-Americans are potential spies.''
"Wen Ho Lee bore the brunt of Richardson's actions, but there were many Chinese-American scientists who felt great fear,'' said Der, who once headed Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco. "Even I got a visit from the FBI, and I'm not a scientist.''
Gee, how was Obama gonna get all the US Asians on board?
Hmmm, how to mollify a substantial minority with financial clout and an eye on political power?
Meanwhile, and entirely unconnected, Obama’s cabinet gets an Asian. It looks like science super-egghead and Nobel Laureate Dr Stephen Chu will be Head of the Department of Energy where his remit is biofuels, a poisoned chalice if ever there was one.
Hated by the big coal producers AND loathed by environmentalists, I don’t fancy Chu's chances.
Madam Miaow says ... Hey, Steve, the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. Doh! No, the flagon with the dragon holds the brew that is true ... Don't trust the gweilo!
Roll over Cheech and Chong. East India Dock Company and HSBC (former Midland Bank), your opium-addled drug-running days in China were 2,500 years too late.
The world's oldest stash of marijuana has been found in a shaman's tomb in the outlands of China. "The region of China where the tomb is located, Xinjiang, is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide."
And none of that feeble "hemp used for fibre", malarky. Experts say this weed was "cultivated for psychoactive purposes".
Two and a half millennia ago? Dammit! I know where we went wrong. We invented ice-cream but no CHOCOLATE!!!!!
Roll over Cheech and Chong. East India Dock Company and HSBC (former Midland Bank), your opium-addled drug-running days in China were 2,500 years too late.
The world's oldest stash of marijuana has been found in a shaman's tomb in the outlands of China. "The region of China where the tomb is located, Xinjiang, is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide."
And none of that feeble "hemp used for fibre", malarky. Experts say this weed was "cultivated for psychoactive purposes".
Two and a half millennia ago? Dammit! I know where we went wrong. We invented ice-cream but no CHOCOLATE!!!!!
