Indian root bridges

I found this at the last minute. It's not about politics or current events, but it's still really cool.

It's a BBC Travel article about people living in the Meghalaya region of India. This place is one of the wettest places on Earth, and during the monsoon season, the rivers grow and become extremely difficult to cross. This is a problem for the indigenous Khasi people, because they still need to get around the jungle during this time.

Up until about 180 years ago, the Khasi would make bridges out of bamboo. Unfortunately, these would often rot and break, leaving people stranded on one side. So eventually, they found a way to guide the roots of rubber trees to reach across the stream. There'd be a tree on either side, and the roots would meet and weave around each other. Eventually, it would be strong enough for people to cross.

Many of these living bridges still exist today, but the practice is dying out due to more modern bridge construction with materials like steel rope. Additionally, new and more direct paths are being created, meaning that a lot of the bridges aren't needed anymore. However, some of the existing ones are being modified or expanded in hopes of attracting tourists.

China and the Internet

This article from CNN is about China and its form of Internet censorship, known as the "Great Firewall."

Despite the  Chinese government's widespread censorship of online content, Chinese web-based businesses are doing extremely well. Some of them are worth billions of dollars. Also, the article mentions that China has "more Web users than the population of the United States."

People fifteen years ago didn't think China's system would work, claiming that an Internet without real freedom of expression isn't really the Internet. But nowadays, it seems like it's worked just fine for the Chinese - and that has implications for the rest of the world. Some human rights groups are concerned that places like Russia or Egypt might adopt similar systems. That's concerning, because access to information is an important component of freedom - so much so that unrestricted Internet access was at one point declared a human right.

There are ways for people in China to bypass the firewall, but the government has continued to crack down on these methods. New methods will probably appear in their place, but it may become harder and harder to develop them.

Remember the war correctly

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/opinion/japan-crown-prince-ww2-comments/?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion&iref=obnetwork

It's been a little while since I found this article - it was published in late February. But I was saving it for my next blog post, and I definitely think it's relevant.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's current prime minister, has shown some disturbing revisionist tendencies towards the crimes that his country committed in World War II. He's also shown interest in loosening the restrictions on Japan's military capabilities. The current emperor's son and crown prince, Naruhito, recently turned 55, and during a news conference he made a statement about the war. He said that even though it was before his time, he thinks that it is important to "look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without direct knowledge."

The article notes that statements from Japan's royal family tend to be very vague and ambiguous. However, even with that in mind, this particular comment seems to be aimed at Abe's attitude towards the war, saying that Japan should not ignore the darker parts of its past. While the emperor of Japan (and his family) do not have any real political power, I would imagine that they do have some level of influence. With that in mind, this statement seems somewhat reassuring.

It is also mentioned that "The Imperial Household almost never strays into political affairs due to constitutional constraints, but Emperor Akihito has on occasion stretched his tether to its limits, and when he has done so it has always been to repudiate right-wingers who prefer to think they are acting in his name." Basically, this is not the first time that statements of this nature have been made, and this pattern makes it more likely that the prince's words were meant as caution.

A scientific explanation of Indian food

Indian food is popular worldwide, and is famous for its distinct flavors and spices. Turns out there's an explanation for why it's so good - or rather, why it's so unique.

 An article from the Washington Post explains that a study was conducted of over 2,000 popular Indian recipes. They looked at the ingredients used in the dishes, and then compared their flavor profiles. There's a lot of science behind this, and the article explains it in detail.

As it turns out, Indian food tends to mix ingredients that have little to no overlap in terms of how they taste. As a result, every ingredient has a purpose in the dish, and they all contribute to the overall flavor. This is contrary to most Western styles of food, where the idea is to put similar flavors together in the same dish. The idea is to make something where the ingredients compliment each other rather than contrasting Just shows that there are plenty of ways to make something taste good.

Katakana font for Japanese learners

So here's something interesting: a company from the U.K. has invented a font for katakana that incorporates English letters into the characters themselves. The idea is that this would make it easier for people learning the language to remember what sound each symbol represents.  Here's the article. 

Katakana is the Japanese phonetic alphabet - each character represents a different syllable, as opposed to kanji, where each character represents a word. From what I understand, the two are usually mixed together in Japanese writing.

I don't know Japanese myself, but I'd imagine that the written part is one of the most intimidating things about learning it. I figure something like this would help a lot with the beginning stages. It's an interesting idea. Kinda makes me wonder what the Japanese would think?

China's one-child policy

We had talked some in class about the demographics of China, specifically when it comes to men outnumbering women. I kinda wanted to find something about that.

I ended up finding this article from the Economist. It's a few years old, but it's probably still relevant. It talks about the one-child policy and the effects it's had, but it also brings up the possibility that the policy was not entirely necessary. Apparently the birth rate was already getting lower by the time the policy was enacted. In addition,  specific academic mentioned in the article argues that there are other ways to lower the birth rate. "Countries that simply improved access to contraceptives—Thailand and Indonesia, for instance—did as much to reduce fertility as China, with its draconian policies." It is also mentioned that "in practice, the one-child policy varies from place to place; it hardly applies to China's minorities and is more lightly applied in rural areas—and there is no population boom in those parts."

Obviously this isn't everyone's opinion, but it does seem to make sense.  I'm taking a geography class right now, and we've talked about how people in developed countries tend to have fewer children than those in less developed countries. There are many reasons for this, but since China has developed so rapidly, it makes sense that they would follow the same pattern. I don't think I know enough about the issue to form an opinion, but it's interesting to see the arguments being made.

So here's some news from China: apparently, their government wants to abolish the goals for conviction and arrest that police are currently held to.

This was news to me - I didn't know that China had something like this in place. But apparently, the police there are evaluated largely on how many arrests lead to convictions, and how many trials result in guilty verdicts. That seems like a really bad idea, because then what's the point of having a trial? The article I found also notes that because of this, police are reluctant to arrest anyone for minor crimes unless they're sure they can get a confession out of them. Similarly, they've been known to use torture to get confessions, regardless of whether the person in question actually committed the crime. 

This kind of practice has been in place since the 90s, but apparently the Chinese government realized that it's a bad idea, so they're aiming to rethink the way they evaluate their police. The article says that this has to do with a lot of recent convictions being overturned upon further investigation. China isn't exactly known for having a fair legal system, but hopefully this will make things a bit more reasonable when dealing with day-to-day crime.

The article in question can be found here.