Taiwan
The KMT in Burma
Reading Panaj Mishra’s NYRB article about Burma, “The Revolt of the Monks,” I was reminded of the KMT’s adventures in Burma, a remarkable episode in the inglorious history of Taiwan’s ruling party. After several pages discussing the brutal suppression of last year’s protest by Burma’s monks, Mishra turns to the political-economic foundation of military rule:
But […]
Sicko in Taiwan
Last year I wrote a post about Taiwan’s National Health Insurance program, having found a thoughtful article about the costs and benefits of Taiwan’s system. Now it seems that Taiwan’s system is getting even more attention, this time from a new PBS TV series: “Sick Around the World.” (All episodes of Frontline are available for […]
Separation of Powers
Photo by 翔
If you ask most people, democracy is synonymous with elections. But, strangely enough, few people who live in electoral democracies feel that elections result in a government which truly responds to their concerns. At its best, electoral politics seems to solve the problem of succession which plagued previous forms of government. Although it […]
Parallel Voting
Schee posted a link to this article on the new voting system which so affected the Taiwanese legislative elections. (See my last post on this.)
Several countries now mix proportional representation with voting for individual candidates, as Taiwan now does. However, it turns out there are two different models for how the mixing works: the one-vote […]
Disenchanted
Almost every single American newspaper ran stories about the Taiwanese election attributing the DPP’s defeat to “broad disenchantment among Taiwan’s 23 million inhabitants over the combative pro-independence campaign that has been the centerpiece of Chen’s two four-year terms as president.” I don’t know what motivated the average Taiwanese voter to support the KMT’s sweeping victory, […]
Love - ING
Over at Pinyin.info Mark Swofford notices a new trend of inserting “ING” at the end of Chinese verbs. When I twittered about this, Zonble pointed me to the above song by MayDay, the title of which is 戀愛ing (Lianai - ING), meaning “loving” or “romancing.” Interestingly, if you listen to the song they don’t pronounce […]
Warner Taiwan Image Collection
This Japanese Era water and ink drawing of the Su-hua highway (which links Hualien with the North of Taiwan) was found on The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection.
Human Rights Day
This is a very complex picture (by Cooloud). Taiwan’s President and Vice-President were prisoners in this building during the White Terror. On Human Rights Day they announced its conversion into a Human Rights Memorial. However, at the same time, “not far from the ceremony, the police were forcefully breaking up a [peaceful] demonstration held by […]
Big Ears
I don’t have too many good pictures of Big Ears (the black dog) because when she was around the dogs were usually moving too fast for me to capture on film. Either they were running, or they were wrestling and all I photographed was a big ball of fur with black and brown paws sticking […]
Geothermal
Speaking of Iceland … one of the coolest things about the country is how well they’ve used geothermal energy:
In Iceland, there are five major geothermal power plants which produce about 26% (2006) of the country’s electricity. In addition, geothermal heating meets the heating and hot water requirements for around 87% of the nation’s housing.
I’ve always […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
