esprit de l'escalier

A couple of articles to read, completely unrelated

Check out this CS Monitor story by Kris Axtman and Mark Clayton entitled, "Worker right or workplace danger?" Apparently the NRA is encouraging its members to boycott Conoco gas stations because the company is forbidding its employees from keeping guns in their cars while at work.

Conoco says:

"ConocoPhillips supports the Second Amendment and respects the rights of law abiding citizens to own guns," the Houston-based oil company says in a written statement. "Our primary concern is the safety of all our employees. We are simply trying to provide a safe and secure working environment for our employees by keeping guns out of our facilities, including our company parking lots."

The NRA says:

"This case clearly goes to the very core of the freedom of Americans to own and travel with firearms in this country," says Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. If companies successfully block the Oklahoma law, "it could be a blueprint for thousands of corporations across this country to declare their parking lots anti-Second Amendment zones, which could in effect gut 'carry' laws in 38 states and restrict hunters on every hunting trip."

I think that enforcing this rule would be difficult, but I don't disagree with it. I think that companies have a right to say they don't want firearms on their property, in order to protect their employees and clients.

Although workplace homicides have declined dramatically in the past decade, weapons bans do appear to make workers safer, according to a recent study. Among hundreds of North Carolina companies surveyed, those that permitted guns to be brought to work saw a risk of homicide five times greater than companies that banned guns at work. "We saw a statistically significant increase in the chances of having a killing in any workplace that permitted guns," says Dana Loomis, professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Here's another article I read today that I found interesting. As my friend Leslie said to me when I emailed it to her, she was looking forward to reading about the catfight. It's from today's Salon (get a free day pass to read the entire thing if you don't subscribe), and is by Gary Younge and called, "Dershowitz vs. Finklestein".

I love the first paragraph:

In his landmark book, "Democracy in America," 19th century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville commented on the fever pitch to which American polemics can often ascend. In a chapter titled "Why American Writers and Speakers Are Often Bombastic," he wrote: "I have often noticed that the Americans whose language when talking business is clear and dry ... easily turn bombastic when they attempt a poetic style ... Writers for their part almost always pander to this propensity ... they inflate their imaginations and swell them out beyond bounds, so that they achieve gigantism, missing real grandeur."

Check out the catfight.

Zheng He and how our schools don't teach us anything about Asia

In a round-about way I found myself looking up Zheng He on the wikipedia website. I was looking him up because the caption beneath the eighth picture in this set from the CBBC website. The caption reads:

An Indonesian actor dressed in traditional Chinese costume during a festival to remember the famous Chinese admiral explorer Cheng Ho.

"Famous Chinese admiral explorer?" I thought. "Never heard of him." Well that's because our schools teach us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Asia, besides the tiny bits we learn about WWII, which focuses mostly on Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To try and correct this error in my education, I looked him up. Wow, what a fascinating individual.

Zheng He was a Muslim eunuch who served as a close confidant of the Yongle Emperor of China (reigned 1403–1424), the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Originally named Ma Sanbao (馬 三保), he came from Yunnan province. He belonged to the Semur minority, who are originally from Central Asia, and practice Islam.

Did you know that there were practicing Muslims in China in the 15th century? Because I didn't. It makes me so mad when I learn about things like this, because Chinese history is so rich and complex and (not to mention *much* longer than our own), and I always wish that I had known it earlier. I understand why my mother studied Chinese history in college.

Listen to this:

The number of his voyages vary depending on method of division, but he travelled at least seven times to "The Western Ocean" with his fleet. He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms — including King Alagonakkara of Ceylon, who came to China to apologize to the Emperor.

There are speculations that some of Zheng He's ships may have travelled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1457 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420.

How is it this man was left off the list of great explorers I learned when I was a kid? Maybe because we are only interested in our European descent?

Though, scrolling down, apparently (if you are registered), Google Earth Interactive has his voyages tracked. That sounds awesome. Here's a link to an article entitled, "Explorer from China who 'beat Columbus to America'" from the Telegraph in the UK.

Also, check out the wikipedia article on the Yongle emperor, for whom Zheng He worked. He sounded pretty cool as well. His era name means "Perpetually Jubilant" and,

He is generally considered one of the greatest emperors of the Ming Dynasty, and to be among the greatest Chinese emperors.

We could all do with some more education. It can be the thing you learned today. It was for me!

Good grief.

This is why I don't like Billy Corgan. I mean, I think music is great and I want to support local bands and musicians, but something about this strikes me as entirely false. Like he's trying *WAY TOO HARD* or something. I know that I just started a blog so shouldn't be so squeamish with public confessionals, but good lord. This all seems too new-agey and crystals to me. Why is he taking out ads in Chicago papers? Is he going to hold open try-outs for new band members? Can he really be collaborative anymore? His head seems too big. But maybe this is all unfair, I just have problems with people labeling themselves and then wearing those labels on their sleeves (or cars). Like, "I am a Musician." "I am a Poet." "I am a Christian." "I am a Patriot." Turns me cold. As if that label supercedes their humanity somehow. I'm all for musicians, and poets, and artists of any kind. I don't like Jesus fish or American flags on people's cars. I don't like PDA. If you are these things, why do you need to advertise? If you are these things, it will be apparent anyway. Don't you have faith enough in yourself and your projection of yourself in the world?

Update: Apparently Greg Kot likes BC's new album. Good for him.