Author Archives: John

Barack Obama spoke at Wesleyan’s commencement! He spoke about his what service has meant to him and what service can do for a country. I found it pretty inspiring, and it was also exciting to see him standing at the familiar podium out in front of Olin Library. The speech made me think about how […]

This is the kind of story that has been told over and over during the last few days here in China. The link is to the story of a couple that clung together for over a day while waiting to be rescued from the rubble of a building, but there are so many more, and […]

Wow! I’m so proud of and happy for Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose musical In the Heights just received the most Tony Award nominations of any production this year! Lin wrote and performed the original version of In the Heights during our sophomore year at Wesleyan. He spent a few years after graduation retooling the show, and […]

This slideshow, based on an interview with James Fallows, is a good primer for people wondering about the Chinese Internet.

Like so many other people, I’ve been thinking a lot about the earthquake that happened on Monday in Chengdu, and feeling somewhat helpless. Well, I guess one way to help is to donate money to the rescue and aid efforts, and information about doing so can be found here. It may seem crass to comment […]

I saw someone wearing a t-shirt (picture) today that read, in English, “Tibet in China, Torch in Heart”. The Chinese, however, read “振兴中华，反对分裂”, which means something like “Revitalize China, Oppose Separatism”. The Chinese was not presented as a translation of the English, but it’s interesting to think about how the designer of the t-shirt (or […]

(Feel free to make fun of me for this post.) It’s a well-known fact that YouTube is awesome. One of the most fun–although maybe not legal(?)–pleasures of YouTube is watching videos of live performances. For instance, if you’re an Elton John fan like me, you can watch an entire concert of performances over several decades […]

I ran across this article yesterday morning in the New York Times, and was excited by the headline: Beijing Stops Construction for Olympics. Since I live in Beijing, the prospect of construction stopping is rather exciting. I’d sleep better at night and breathe better during the day. Unfortunately, after actually reading the article, I learned […]

I was struck by the following sentence in this article from the New York Times: A good indicator that things are going in the wrong direction, he said, is if your credit card balance has been rising in the last year but your savings balance has been falling. Is there ever any reason to not […]