Wuxi's Sinking Square

This sign can be seen at Changan Temple Market in Downtown Wuxi, China.


Changan Market is near the said-to-be sinking Moresky360 building.

So, in the shadows of the Wuxi's Moresky360 building, is a sinking square.

Tony on Tuesday Morning

Train Spotting in China

Yes!

• The 7-9 Seahawks win their division, and will host the defending Super Bowl Champions in a playoff game.
• The neighbors on the second floor -- newlyweds -- dropped off some candy from their wedding party. (we live on the third floor) 

Train Spotting without the Dope

Catching the the 610 Bus in Wuxi, China.

Interesting Links from City Journal

This link: The Bus Market Booms bemoans the fact that entrepreneurs can create affordable transportation for people but are thwarted by government meddling in transportation.  In America, it is Amtrak, the White Elephant of a transport company being subsidized by the private bus entrepreneurs who are actually responding to the needs of real people.  In China, governments are building unnecessary trains and subways.  Sure, trains are sexy, but it is the bus that is a better and more economical way to transport people about.  I can also recall from my time in the area of Vancouver how the car was a necessity for travel anywhere because of the government controlling the bus and taxi industry.  I have witnessed the a private transportation system pop here in Wuxi that the authorities have gotten to yet.

 

This link: Asian Megacities, Free and Unfree describes the urban development of Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul.  Shanghai and Beijing don't get any praise.  The word "facade" pops immediately when Shanghai and Beijing are examined. 

Snow!

AKIC Blogagigabloganatings...

....whatever that is.  I have coined a word, again.  It just needs to get into circulation, again.

 

Here are some blogagigabloganatings that I have produced, just today, or even just right now:

 

• In the year 2011, we have a girl working at our school whose English name is Eleven.  I will taunt her continuously about this.  Another trainer has suggested that she will get married on November Eleventh this year (11/11/11 -- get it?).  I suggest that her husband adopt the English name Two Thousand, so we can call them Two Thousand and Eleven, who were married in Two Thousand and Eleven.  Either that, or she can call her husband Ocean -- Ocean's Eleven, get it?  Ha ha!
• Some foreigner tells me that he got nailed by four guys as he was leaving a pub in the 1912 district recently.  Were these four guys Chinese?  He couldn't say, he told me....
• I liked this episode of Econtalk so much, I listened to it twice.  The subject of the podcast?  Ludwig Von Mises.  Not only do Von Mises show that Socialism couldn't work because it couldn't change men's selfish nature, he also showed that if it a Socialist-thinking population could be produced, the problem of economic calculation without Capitalistic situations would doom the enterprise.  In other words, Socialism is in conflict with the reality of human nature, and Socialism, even under the best conditions, cannot solve the problem of economic problems of distributing or producing wealth.  Socialism is impoverishing.
• Man of the Year in 2010?  One of the students said some fellow named Li Gong.  Apparently, his son got in an accident and bragged that he would get out of responsibility for it because his father was Li Gong.  This boast was caught and video, and then circulated on the Internet.  Li Gong was fired.  Many Chinese people were happy.
• 2011 predictions from the students?  None worth mentioning.  Again, the most brilliant predictions were mine. (Hilary Clinton will finally divorce Bill).
• Students tell me that they are going to Shandong, and Hubei on business trips.
• None of the students, I talked to, did anything on New Year's Eve.  Some may have been playing computer games at midnight.
• I have to physically restrain Tony from taking my DVD out of the player.
• If Obama, slick political operator, in the manner of the excretish Pierre Eliot Trudeau?  Charles Krauthammer and David Warren seem to think so -- I hope they are both wrong, dead wrong, about  this because of their both being Conservative in temperament and so natural  pessimists about politics.  But the parallels between Obama and Trudeau are eerie.  Obama, like Trudeau, is a man devoid of original ideas, but able to personify for progressive-types the progressive pipe-dream.  Obama, like Trudeau wrote enough before he was elected leader to convince enough people he was an intellectual.  Obama, like Trudeau, looks good on television.  Obama, like Trudeau, can pretend to be something he is not.  Obama, like Trudeau, can get away with shit, that would sink a less charismatic politician.  Obama, like Trudeau, is a lucky son-of-a-bitch.  Obama has had opponents like John McCain; Trudeau had opponents like Joe Clark and Bob Stanfield.  Stanfield, by all accounts, would have been a more competent Prime Minister than Trudeau ever was, but he was unelectable (a fate that may well happen to Obama's similarly more competent executive opponents Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney or Mitch Daniels).