Buggers, Piggies, and Humans

I just finished reading Orson Scott Card's Speaker of the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game (which I read in elementary school), and in the news, I read this touching story. It really hit home the message Orson was trying to send with his novel. That is, how to live and love one another. This one another may be another of your race, another of your city, your country, this earth, or perhaps, of this universe regardless of species, as long as they are living. They don't even have to be as "intelligent" as we are. For me to accept another is not so much their finally achieving a level of civilization that I recognize, but rather, that I have matured, and come to love and accept them for who they are. I do believe these dolphins are intelligent, and their behaviour with humans seems much more civilized than the way we approach them. Look, the fellow tried to get out of the circle, but after he saw the Great White, then he understood the dolphins intentions. If we found the dolphins to be a supremely intelligent species, with capabilities matching ours, or the potential to, most of us would feel threatened by their existence! This behaviour does not seem to match with the level of intelligence we possess. As a species, we are not yet wise.

On another note, Paris here I come!

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Youthful Reminisces

These past four days have been a trip down memory lane. I'm going to try to organize some of the memories for blogging, though not all in this post. My parents, M and I took a road trip to Hualien, partly as a family get-away, and also to introduce our Taiwanese hometown to a group of my brother's ( Albert Wu see here and here ) students from France. Albert and his wife are jointly teaching a course in history in Paris, and over the last few weeks they have been taking their students on an abroad research-coursework-fun tour of Taiwan. If you know my father, he tends to try to get involved in some way with any of his sons' projects, and from our perspectives, it's great to get his help and/or just advice (from time to time). My brother and his wife planned a historical, social justice introduction to Taiwan (I wrote about a visit to Dadaocheng ). Important components to understand the complex identities and mindsets of Taiwanese today involves understanding the Ea

Did X say that?

I was cleaning out old draft emails when I came upon these quotes. 1. “Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.” 2. In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit . -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965) Both quotes resonated with me, and both quotes provide profound, provoking, prose projecting providence. But for the first quote I'm not sure who to attribute, and for the second, while I'd like to imagine he said that, I'm not really sure if Dr. Schweitzer did (because I have never met him!). In the internet age, I think it really behooves one to critically analyze everything read online. Does X make sense, did X say that? Sometimes it&

Just a few more quotes to post and share!

See the post title. ***** If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945) "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions d

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