As 2019 approaches, it's time for a new start. An African-American panelist discussing race relations in America observed the Civil Rights Movement offered a more promising starting point from which to consider future race relations than the era of slavery. Nelson Mandela emerged from apartheid and 28 years in prison in South Africa with the same idea. Basically, he asked, what is gained by doing the same thing to whites as they did to blacks, when blacks are in power?
When blacks gained power in neighboring Zimbabwe, the government ignored Mandela's advice, seized white farms, plunged the country's economy into a rapid decline, and left the population dependent on food aid to avoid starvation.
The point is, at the beginning of 2019, we are free to choose where we want to begin. There are some great starting points: the 10 Commandments, the U.S. Declaration of Independence's declaration that all men are created equal, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Beginning 2019 with this 70-year-old declaration in mind, countries could avoid pre-World War II conditions: genocide, refugee migrations, Middle East conflict, abortion, proliferation of weapons, human trafficking, squandering natural resources, and polluting the environment.
Happy New Year!
Friday, December 28, 2018
Friday, December 21, 2018
Let 'em Sleep, Let 'em Sleep, Let 'em Sleep
If a baby and an adolescent are home for the holidays, adults will find one gets up too early and the other too late.
Studies continue to show a teen's biological clock ticks sleeping and waking times very differently for older adults and younger children. When a teen is on vacation, see if he or she prefers to stay up closer to midnight and to sleep in later each morning. This finding caused the American Academy of Pediatrics to call on school districts to move start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.
In the U.S., the National Center for Education Statistics found only 17% of public middle and high schools now reflect this natural pattern of teen sleeping schedules even though later start times reduce tardiness and absences. Teachers report students are less groggy and are more likely to engage in active discussions and make fewer mistakes in lab sciences, consistent with negative findings that sleep deprivation undermines learning and retention of new information. In one study, students who began school with a later start time received final grades that were slightly higher than those who began their school days earlier.
Changing the start times of middle and high schools does create problems. Administrations have to reschedule extracurricular activities and bus routes for lower and upper grades. Families also need to adjust to adults and students leaving at different times. And students who work after school or take care of younger siblings also are affected.
The earlier post, "Sleep Deprived Test Scores," suggested moving standardized tests to later times could improve scores and would have less impact on everyday school schedules. The post, "Big Projects Combat Climate Change," claims classes may need to shift to night time to avoid the heat of the day.
Studies continue to show a teen's biological clock ticks sleeping and waking times very differently for older adults and younger children. When a teen is on vacation, see if he or she prefers to stay up closer to midnight and to sleep in later each morning. This finding caused the American Academy of Pediatrics to call on school districts to move start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.
In the U.S., the National Center for Education Statistics found only 17% of public middle and high schools now reflect this natural pattern of teen sleeping schedules even though later start times reduce tardiness and absences. Teachers report students are less groggy and are more likely to engage in active discussions and make fewer mistakes in lab sciences, consistent with negative findings that sleep deprivation undermines learning and retention of new information. In one study, students who began school with a later start time received final grades that were slightly higher than those who began their school days earlier.
Changing the start times of middle and high schools does create problems. Administrations have to reschedule extracurricular activities and bus routes for lower and upper grades. Families also need to adjust to adults and students leaving at different times. And students who work after school or take care of younger siblings also are affected.
The earlier post, "Sleep Deprived Test Scores," suggested moving standardized tests to later times could improve scores and would have less impact on everyday school schedules. The post, "Big Projects Combat Climate Change," claims classes may need to shift to night time to avoid the heat of the day.
Monday, December 17, 2018
The Congo Needs A Dec. 23 Miracle
Instead of a miracle, a suspicious fire destroyed voting materials and moved the December 23 election of a new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to December 30. Provisional results of the delayed election showed the surprise victory by Felix Tshisekedi, son of a deceased opposition leader popular in Kinshasa. Nonetheless, controversy surrounds his victory over Martin Fayulu, who was seen as a greater threat to former president Joseph Kabila's history of corruption and disregard for the rule of law. An NGO that fielded 40,000 election observers said their results showed former oil executive, Fayulu, had won, just as a pre-election survey also predicted.
Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would frustrate the hoped for calm transition.
The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.
Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.
Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.
With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.
Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.
When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.
Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.
Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.
Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would frustrate the hoped for calm transition.
The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.
Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.
Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.
With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.
Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.
When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.
Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.
Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Make Holiday Season the Best Time of the Year
It's important to make sure everyone enjoys the holiday season, since studies show it can be a very sad time for some folks.
Excited kids and adults who need to chill in what also can be a hectic season need to work on projects together. Making holiday cookies can be as easy as slicing and baking readymade sugar cookie dough from the grocery store or as complicated as mixing, rolling out dough, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and frosting them.
Making a garland paper chain to trim a tree has become easier through the years. You still cut out red and green strips of construction paper, but connecting the loops of paper together has gone from using some kind of paste that slops all over to staples to a neat little 3M dispenser that rolls out glue on two sides.
One year my young daughter and I made scented pomanders by stuffing oranges full of whole cloves. We tried it unsuccessfully another year with limes that went bad and mushy before we finished, however.
Then, there are the potato prints you can use to make gift tags and wrapping paper. Cut a really large baking potato in half and use a star cookie cutter to press the shape into the smooth side of each potato half. Then, carefully cut away the part outside the star shape to make the star stand out. Pour poster paint: red, green, yellow, blue, or whatever colors you want to use, on two different saucers. Dip the potato star into the paint and stamp the design on heavy card stock to make gift tags (Cut the holiday cards you receive this year into usable pieces to use for gift tags next year.) or stamp the star shape all over plain tissue to make wrapping paper.
Germany is credited with originating the custom of having a live, decorated Christmas tree at home and in the public square. St. Francis of Assisi added the custom of including a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ child. St. Francis, who is associated with his love of animals, would be happy to see how sheep, cows, oxen, camels, and other animals often complete the manger scene.
Singing carols is a tradition in homes, churches, schools, and even in concerts where the audience sings along. Entertainers make holiday records and CDs and host seasonal music specials on TV.
St. Nicholas and Father Christmas make sure there are gifts and gift drives that bring joy to the naughty and nice alike. Presents might be placed under trees, in shoes, in hanging stockings (thanks to a custom from Holland), and in bins for the less fortunate at community centers, churches, libraries, and stores.
Presents come earlier in some countries and later in others. St. Nicholas can arrive December 6. Sweden celebrates St. Lucy Day on December 13. When days are about to become lighter, young daughters, dressed in white, wear a wreath of greens and lighted candles on their heads and carry trays of coffee and buns to family members. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with gifts from the Three Kings (Magi) on January 6.
Excited kids and adults who need to chill in what also can be a hectic season need to work on projects together. Making holiday cookies can be as easy as slicing and baking readymade sugar cookie dough from the grocery store or as complicated as mixing, rolling out dough, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and frosting them.
Making a garland paper chain to trim a tree has become easier through the years. You still cut out red and green strips of construction paper, but connecting the loops of paper together has gone from using some kind of paste that slops all over to staples to a neat little 3M dispenser that rolls out glue on two sides.
One year my young daughter and I made scented pomanders by stuffing oranges full of whole cloves. We tried it unsuccessfully another year with limes that went bad and mushy before we finished, however.
Then, there are the potato prints you can use to make gift tags and wrapping paper. Cut a really large baking potato in half and use a star cookie cutter to press the shape into the smooth side of each potato half. Then, carefully cut away the part outside the star shape to make the star stand out. Pour poster paint: red, green, yellow, blue, or whatever colors you want to use, on two different saucers. Dip the potato star into the paint and stamp the design on heavy card stock to make gift tags (Cut the holiday cards you receive this year into usable pieces to use for gift tags next year.) or stamp the star shape all over plain tissue to make wrapping paper.
Germany is credited with originating the custom of having a live, decorated Christmas tree at home and in the public square. St. Francis of Assisi added the custom of including a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ child. St. Francis, who is associated with his love of animals, would be happy to see how sheep, cows, oxen, camels, and other animals often complete the manger scene.
Singing carols is a tradition in homes, churches, schools, and even in concerts where the audience sings along. Entertainers make holiday records and CDs and host seasonal music specials on TV.
St. Nicholas and Father Christmas make sure there are gifts and gift drives that bring joy to the naughty and nice alike. Presents might be placed under trees, in shoes, in hanging stockings (thanks to a custom from Holland), and in bins for the less fortunate at community centers, churches, libraries, and stores.
Presents come earlier in some countries and later in others. St. Nicholas can arrive December 6. Sweden celebrates St. Lucy Day on December 13. When days are about to become lighter, young daughters, dressed in white, wear a wreath of greens and lighted candles on their heads and carry trays of coffee and buns to family members. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with gifts from the Three Kings (Magi) on January 6.
What is the holiday season's best gift? Good will toward each other, of course.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
If You See Something, Say Something
Voters in the United States are learning more about the contacts between President Trump's administration and Russia. In Ben Macintyre's 2018 book, The Spy and the Traitor, they can learn what a country is capable of doing to its enemies:
- Gather and analyze information about enemies
- Recruit informants, agents, and double agents who are: lonely; hurt by fate or nature (they might be ugly or short); have inferiority complexes; crave power, influence, a promotion; need money; can be compromised/blackmailed
- Aid a spy's career by helping him or her rise to positions that provide greater access to information and to influence on polity decisions
- Infiltrate anti-government movements
- Deploy "illegals" who live as ordinary citizens in foreign countries, are more difficult to detect by counterintelligence investigation than spies under diplomatic or consular cover, and can be mobilized for any purpose
- Employ methods to avoid surveillance
- Create escape/exfiltration routes for a spy who is compromised
- Provide secret communication and copying equipment for spies
- Establish sites where secret information about where to meet or when can be signaled to spies in plain sight, such as by chalk marks on mailboxes or orange peels under park benches
- Establish secret dead drop sites for hiding messages or money without personal contact with spies
- Transfer information to spies during an undetected quick brush pass by another person
- Manipulate media to influence public opinion, create fake news, cultivate officials and opinion makers sympathetic to a cause
- Provide disinformation; create false evidence about foreign dangers, such as packages of arms labeled "Made in China"; provide inflammatory posters
- Forge documents and foreign currency
- Implement sabotage, supply arms
- Bug homes and offices
- Kidnap, drug, torture, kill
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Holiday Gift List for Modern Kids
Toy companies offer today's children a roster of robots almost from birth. Kids aged five and up can command Botley the Coding Robot to go around objects and to master an obstacle course. The MindWare company (mindware.com) provides easy-to-follow instructions that enable eight-year-olds to assemble and program robots operated by batteries, solar, hydraulic, or chemical power. Some robots from MindWare use artificial intelligence and infrared sensors. One climbs smooth surfaces using a suction system.
Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.
A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.
In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.
Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.
Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.
Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.
Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.
A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.
In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.
Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.
Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.
Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
What Would Xi Do?
Today in China, President Xi Jinping expects his Thoughts to replace those of Confucius, Mao Zedong, Mohammed, and Jesus. But what are his Thoughts?
At last year's 19th Communist Party Congress, President Xi announced China entered a new era of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." Since then, many have tried to attach actionable meaning to President Xi's vague dictum. University professors lecture on the Chinese characteristics of socialism; party cells attempt to study a 355-page book on the subject; major companies, libraries, and community centers set aside space for Thought study.
Much to President Xi's annoyance, since Deng Xiaoping's 1978 emphasis on full tilt economic and scientific progress creeps into discussions, some claim "socialism with Chinese characteristics" really is "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." Maybe President Xi is a little jealous of Deng, who is glorified for beginning China's 40-year economic transformation, while he is left to stifle constitutional, democratic, and religious rumblings from Hong Kong to Tibet. Just to add to the confusion, one of Deng's sons, Deng Pufang, who was paralyzed when Maoist radicals threw him off a building during the Cultural Revolution, disagrees with the aggressive foreign policy and "world class" army Xi's Thought seems to espouse.
Judging from what is rewarded at China's universities, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects are consistent with the Thoughts of Xi. Students receive financial rewards for STEM papers published in the Scopius catalog of abstracts. Some oppose the tendency of students to play it safe with incremental research rather than aiming for breakthrough innovations, especially with meaningful engineering discoveries that advance modernization or with new social science theories about human behavior. In his new book, Blueprint, genetics psychologist, Robert Plomin, also exposes some of the defects in papers published in scientific journals. He observed researchers are tempted to report only the most novel results, the best story, even though their experiments did not gain the same results every time. In other words, results could not be replicated.
The Chinese Party definitely agrees with what Xi's Thought prohibits: 1) belief in universal values, such as human rights and freedom of speech and assembly, even though China's constitution allows these rights, 2) an independent judiciary free of government interference and open to public scrutiny, and 3) criticism of past Communist Party mistakes.
Recently, Western ambassadors, however, have not been reluctant to criticize the mass detentions and surveillance of Muslim Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang province. According to an article in the Financial Times, China uses facial recognition technology to track at least 2.5 million people in the province. Foreign reporters who recently visited the camps were shown those in detention happily singing in English. They also found Beijing's re-education strategy seemed to have reduced the Uighur Muslims' religious devotion.
At last year's 19th Communist Party Congress, President Xi announced China entered a new era of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." Since then, many have tried to attach actionable meaning to President Xi's vague dictum. University professors lecture on the Chinese characteristics of socialism; party cells attempt to study a 355-page book on the subject; major companies, libraries, and community centers set aside space for Thought study.
Much to President Xi's annoyance, since Deng Xiaoping's 1978 emphasis on full tilt economic and scientific progress creeps into discussions, some claim "socialism with Chinese characteristics" really is "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." Maybe President Xi is a little jealous of Deng, who is glorified for beginning China's 40-year economic transformation, while he is left to stifle constitutional, democratic, and religious rumblings from Hong Kong to Tibet. Just to add to the confusion, one of Deng's sons, Deng Pufang, who was paralyzed when Maoist radicals threw him off a building during the Cultural Revolution, disagrees with the aggressive foreign policy and "world class" army Xi's Thought seems to espouse.
Judging from what is rewarded at China's universities, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects are consistent with the Thoughts of Xi. Students receive financial rewards for STEM papers published in the Scopius catalog of abstracts. Some oppose the tendency of students to play it safe with incremental research rather than aiming for breakthrough innovations, especially with meaningful engineering discoveries that advance modernization or with new social science theories about human behavior. In his new book, Blueprint, genetics psychologist, Robert Plomin, also exposes some of the defects in papers published in scientific journals. He observed researchers are tempted to report only the most novel results, the best story, even though their experiments did not gain the same results every time. In other words, results could not be replicated.
The Chinese Party definitely agrees with what Xi's Thought prohibits: 1) belief in universal values, such as human rights and freedom of speech and assembly, even though China's constitution allows these rights, 2) an independent judiciary free of government interference and open to public scrutiny, and 3) criticism of past Communist Party mistakes.
Recently, Western ambassadors, however, have not been reluctant to criticize the mass detentions and surveillance of Muslim Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang province. According to an article in the Financial Times, China uses facial recognition technology to track at least 2.5 million people in the province. Foreign reporters who recently visited the camps were shown those in detention happily singing in English. They also found Beijing's re-education strategy seemed to have reduced the Uighur Muslims' religious devotion.
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