The subterraneans

Everything you ever wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask... about the world's metros, subways, undergrounds, U-Bahns or T-Banas. Maps. Photos. Metros with a View. Left or Right? Metro Bits.

Postscript: M Scott Peck

The Daily Telegraph obituary of M Scott Peck, linked in the previous post, generated some email -- for and against the Telegraph's somewhat harsh, irritable tone. For a more anodyne obit, try the New York Times (reg. required). Thanks, Mike B!
The Telegraph obit also generated email pointing out that though a messenger may have lived a less than wholesome life, the message was still valuable.
The example given? Tibetan rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa. who founded the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, in 1974. In the years prior to his death (1986) Trungpa became an "alcoholic, a smoker and slept with his students. He was an artist and a poet, the man was also a wonderful conduit for Buddhist teaching. Go figure." Trungpa helped a lot of people.
Which got me thinking further. About psychiatrist R D Laing. And Alan Watts. Laing helped many people (including Mister Bijou) through his professional work and his writings (The Divided Self; The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise; Knots). Separately, Watts explained Buddhism and, later, Taoism (The Way of Zen; Tao: the Watercourse Way). Both Laing and Watts ended up terminal alcoholics. Yet their works continue to have merit. So, the conundrum remains: how important is knowledge of a person's private life in assessing their published work?

M Scott Peck

M Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Travelled (the title comes from a line in a Robert Frost poem) just went and died. As penance for past sins, Mister Bijou actually read that book some time in the early 1990s... oh, well. The UK's Daily Telegraph obituary is an absolute corker:

Latterly he suffered from impotence and Parkinson's Disease and devoted himself to Christian songwriting, at which he was not very good.

He married Lily Ho in 1959; they had three children, two of whom would not talk to their father. She left him in 2003. He is survived by his second wife, Kathy, an educationalist he picked up, while still married, after a lecture at Sacramento, and by his children.

Read more? Daily Telegraph demolition job.

Bob Dylan: watch the parking meters

How Bob Dylan beat the press: AlterNet
How did it feel? Guardian Culture Vulture Blog
Bob Dylan: How [Andy Kershaw] found the man who shouted 'Judas' Independent
Series Of Clichés: The American Prospect
Like A Rolling Stone: lyrics

Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now

Mercy Now, by Mary Gauthier.
Beautiful, beautiful... oh, yes...
To listen, please go to Mary Gauthier's website and then click on Mercy Now (streaming audio).
Thanks, Gavin!
For more info about Ms Gauthier, try here.

Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO

The local organizing body for NGOs and other grassroots organizations which are coming to Hong Kong for the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (13-18 December 2005) is the grandly titled Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO.
Mister Bijou has looked high and low for a website with the same-name Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO, to no avail. The closest Mister Bijou can come is the Hong Kong People's Alliance rather threadbare website.
Still, one website can lead to another. In this case, the Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant Centre. That organization's Hong Kong Declaration on WTO, Development and Migration (July 2005) makes for interesting reading.
Further recommendations? Founded in 1976 and still going strong: Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Center.
Stop corporate globalization? Our World Is Not For Sale.
Like to breathe fresh air? English/Chinese Greenpeace.
Agit-prop films? HKFS Social Movement Resource Centre: Wednesday Night Film Series.
Fancy bureaucratic bells and whistles? For that, there is the altogether flashier Hong Kong Government WTO website. Which has some useful bits and pieces such as What is the WTO? But the website is so flash that some of the mind-numbingly lame 30-second videos of Hong Kong Government Public Announcements about 'free trade' (aired on TV) in the Video Gallery (Flash required) don't seem to work with Mister Bijou's cookies-off Firefox browser (my mum counseled me to never accept cookies from strangers)...

Hong Kong To Stock Chemical Antidotes For WTO Meeting

Looks like Hong Kong government is working itself up into a panic-mode frenzy. As well as bulk-buying rubber bullets:

The Hong Kong government has ordered hospitals to stock up on antidotes to cyanide and insecticide in preparation for chemical attacks during the World Trade Organization meeting in December, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Hong Kong's Hospital Authority is checking stocks of the chemicals sodium nitrite, sodium thiosulphate, hydroxocobalamin and pralidoxime - antidotes to cyanide and insecticide - the Ming Pao Daily News reported Sunday, citing unidentified sources.

More? Dow Jones Newswire via Nasdaq.

For weeks now there have been regular 'scare' stories appearing in the local Chinese-language press -- like the one from the Ming Pao Daily News. And they all seem to usually cite one of those 'unidentified sources'.
Well, freedom lovers, Mister Bijou is old enough to remember when governments were getting their knickers in a twist and saying: 'hippies plan to drop LSD in the water supply'.
Camarades: Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.
What we have here is government black propaganda to create dis-ease and antipathy locally to anyone who has anything critical to say about what is going to be discussed and decided at the WTO meeting. What is going to be discussed and decided? So far, there has been nothing about that in the mainstream media. In such absence, Mister Bijou is going to step forward and elucidate...

Postscript: Typhoon Damrey

Having caused much havoc on Hainan Island (satellite image), Typhoon Damrey became Severe Tropical Storm Damrey as it crossed the Gulf of Tonkin before making landfall in northern Vietnam. Damrey -- which Mister Bijou now knows is the Cambodian word for elephant -- is now heading for northern Laos.
That activity on the right is Typhoon Longwang, currently about 370km south-southwest of Iwo Jima (to enlarge, click map). Longwang is forecast to move west at about 15km/hr across the western North Pacific.
According to an unlinkable, javascript page at Hong Kong Observatory, Longwang is the Putonghua for Dragon King, the God of Rain in Chinese mythology. Just so you know.

US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax

NewScientist.com news service.

Kate Bush

King of the Mountain, single, Mp3 (direct link, won't last long). From the 2-cd to be released 7 November 2005. First new Kate Bush material in 12 years...

NOLA: killings, rapes and mayhem that never happened

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the [Super] Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

The rapes? Shootouts? Rampant violence? Never happened. Read more? New Orleans' online Times-Picayune.

Yangjiang, China, to go nuclear

News that construction of a nuclear power plant in Yangjiang, a port city in south China's Guangdong Province, is expected to begin early next year, and that it will be the largest nuclear power plant in China, got Mister Bijou googling...
Yangjiang? It's 250km southwest of Macao (to enlarge, click map). According to Yangjiang government website, it is "an uprising city by the South China Sea." I think they mean "up and coming", but hey! full marks for having (a) a website in English; (b) loads of pages about a place that looks real interesting. On yet another website , Mister Bijou learned that Yangjiang City has a population of 2.6 million. Who knew? That there are beautiful beaches, islands and greenery in the locality. And that the place is a seriously major manufacturer of knives and scissors. Sort of a Chinese Sheffield in the sub-tropics. The 21st century? Live and learn.

Consumer Affairs: Bob Dylan's No Direction Home

For those of you in the UK, BBC 2 is showing the first part of the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home this evening. Part le deux is on demain soir. But you almost certainly know that already. Hereabouts, Mister Bijou has to go to Hong Kong on Tuesday, so he will probably swing by the HMV store in Central and pick up the 2-DVD ($229.00; US$29.52; GBP16.35), despite reading this:

Scorsese's brightest stroke is to use these historic performances as the film's leitmotif, cutting back to one dark U.K. stage or another every time the back story reaches an especially fraught point. Tragically, his final offense is to climax No Direction Home with Pennebaker's footage of perhaps the single most fabled live performance in rock history -- "Like a Rolling Stone" at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, May 17, 1966, the so-called Judas show -- and cutting, after just one verse, from the performance to a black screen and end credits. Imagine spotting Halley's Comet, then being forced to close your eyes.

That's from Devin McKinney, writing in the left-leaning American Prospect. Oh, wait! Amazon is selling the 2-DVD for US$17.99. Eleven and a bit US dollars cheaper. Even with the add-on postage it is cheaper. DVD Region 1? That's what Hong Kong HMV is selling. Not that it matters. Mister Bijou has one of those completely promiscuous play-anything Made in China DVD/VCD/Mp3/WAV/and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all format players; just slip it in and press the play button.
Anyway, among all the other news print articles, historian Simon Scharma -- always worth a read -- writes about Mister D in Voice of America. That Guardian article has a listing of UK events and other related stuff, too.

War of words in Guangdong

Over the weekend, 60 59 of Hong Kong's legislators made a trip across the border to Guangdong to meet senior provincial and national leaders. Signalled as a new willingness on Beijing's side for dialogue, this officially-sanctioned trip was a first. Among the 60 59 were Hong Kong pro-democracy legislators, including the indefatigable democrat Martin Lee (who last year had the honour of being branded a 'traitor' by a senior mainland official), Democratic Party leader Lee Wing-tat, trade unionist legislator Lee Cheuk-yan and Frontier group convenor Emily Lau. Almost all had previously been barred from entering the mainland for any reason whatsoever.
China's main man at the White Swan Hotel talks? Zhang Dejiang, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee.
Things went reasonably well until someone from Hong Kong brought up June 4, 1989. No, that someone wasn't pseudo-Trotskyist and street agitator Leung Kwok-hung (Longhair), although he did manage to create some argy-bargy, earlier.
South China Morning Post (paid; no link).
(Hong Kong) Standard.
Bloomberg.
The mainland's Xinhua.

They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

Glorious foot-tapping, singalong 1966 classic by Napoleon XIV. That, and 20 other truly demented versions. For all mp3s go to the mostly wonderful WFMU.

Typhoon Damrey

While Mister Bijou was asleep someone upgraded a merely severe tropical storm up to a headstrong typhoon (click image to enlarge). According to Hong Kong Observatory, Typhoon Damrey is about 400km south-southwest of Hong Kong and moving west at about 12km/hr. Towards Hainan Island, where they should already have battened down the hatches.
The Obs say winds at the centre of Damrey are achieving 140km/hr. A little island in the South China Sea is experiencing wind speeds up to 98km/hr. Other than the gusty winds? Locally, occasional sunshine, occasional rain. Later today, Mister Bijou is taking the 3:30pm ferry into town -- should be an enjoyable ride! The Number Three is still up.

Blowin' in the wind

The Number Three went up over night and is still up. Tung Wan Bay is the place to be for whitecaps on an angry sea, crashing waves, and full-on winds: 51 km/hr with gusts and gale force winds up to 92 km/hr. Wonderful! Exhilarating! You can feel it blow all the cobwebs away! Whatever else it may be, this is one of nature's gifts: a natural high! Are there more ions in the air? Meanwhile, on the leeward side of the island, which is where the harbour is, not a leaf stirs.
According to Hong Kong Observatory, severe tropical storm Damrey is about 290km south of Hong Kong (4pm) and it is moving west at about 15km/hr. No rain has yet fallen on a little island in the South China Sea. That's for later...

Hurricane Rita: KPRC Local 2 News Live

Houston's KPRC Local 2 News Live Online. Stranded on the highways and byways of Texas, sitting in the predicted path of the hurricane, are loads of evacuees whose cars have run out of gas (petrol)...

Tropical cyclone Damrey

Tropical cyclone Damrey (click to enlarge image) has been dithering about in the South China Sea for a couple of days. According to Hong Kong Observatory, Damrey has intensified into a severe tropical storm. Which explains why so many local trawlers are now tidely anchored together in the typhoon shelter of a little island in the South China Sea.
Currently (thanks, Obs!), the centre of the storm is about 370 kilometres southeast of Hong Kong. Damrey is moving very slowly (12km/h) west. Tropical Cyclone Signal No 1 has been hoisted. The Number Three may go up overnight. No rain, yet. No drama, either. The rain will arrive on Saturday. As usual, another wet weekend.

World Trade Organization: Hong Kong

The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference is scheduled to take place in Hong Kong 13-18 December, 2005. Locally, coverage of what the ministers will be talking about has amounted to next to nothing. Instead, since the summer already, local English- and Chinese-language newspapers have been reporting official steps being taken to head-off, contain, deal with 'violent protests'. Stephen Steven Vines in today's (Hong Kong) Standard has an opinion piece:

Fearing the outbreak of violent demonstrations the government is planning to close most Hong Kong Island schools on the conference's opening day. Companies have been warned not to schedule important business meetings in the Wan Chai area during the conference. Banks have been instructed to formulate plans for a disruption of business.
In addition there is the usual host of police mobilization measures, traffic control schemes and, so we now learn, a plan to prevent the hijacking of RTHK, the event's host broadcaster.
Meanwhile, there are reports that hotel rooms have been denied to would-be WTO protesters and the existence of an official immigration watchlist has been made public which strongly suggests that entry will be denied to some of those who want to take part in the demonstrations,
What message is Hong Kong sending the world with all this talk of riot and disruption? One reading of the situation is that the government is panicking, so unsure of coping that it is lashing out in all directions.

Read Stephen Vines in full? Go here.