Our local Wal-Mart installed last week new self-checkout registers. Customers can now zip through with a few beeps and be on their merry way. A local supermarket, Tops, has had self-checkouts for a couple years, and when the store installed them, it was fun to use them (and the kids, in particular, thought it was nifty neat). I've since had a ( Read more... )

Revisiting "Planet China" with J. Maarten Troost

#15: Lost on Planet China: One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation by L. Maarten Troost (2008 ( Read more... )

I had a "good luck" message from an unexpected source today, wishing me well for the start of the semester. It was much appreciated ( Read more... )

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"Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we falll."

- Confucius

Got a note today that Expotia, the official travel booking site for the World Expo in Shanghai, found my blog posts at scholarsandrogues.com and has featured them on their own blog:

http://hotels.expotia.com/blog/

I thought that was pretty groovy!

I made reference to this song in a post I made last week. Beijing really did feel like this song.

Patrick Watson, "Beijing"

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Folks who know me well know I love a good adventure ( Read more... )

I saw these guys at the World Expo in Shanghai. Really enjoyed them.

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When his majesty Yongle, third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, decided he wanted a new house, he wanted to do it up big. Really big. From his palace in the southern capital of Nanjing, he set one million peasants and 100,000 artisans to work hundreds of miles to the north, in Beijing, where he intended to move the capital. The year was 1406 ( Read more... )