A couple of interesting perspectives on China

We spend 26 days in China during August-September 2010.  Just enough to make us feel like experts without really becoming experts.  This trip accounts for my pictures of the Shanghai “Pudong” Financial District in the blog header.  We saw such tremendous growth and energy in Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Wu Han and other cities we visited.

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Private investments in public schools?

Karl Marx advanced the idea of “false consciousness” to explain why people may hold beliefs and behave in ways actually harmful to them.  This general principle can be modified by by Upton Sinclair’s observation that ”it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

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