Coruscation

EGShares Small Cap India ETF (SCIN)

This pick is more of an opportunistic buy of an asset class that has potential to deliver huge returns over the long run. The Indian economy is expected to eventually become the second-largest in the world, posting growth rates over the next several decades that surpass even China. Small cap companies that rely on growth in local consumption should be ideally positioned to profit from a swelling middle class, ongoing urbanization, and general increases in wealth and improvements in quality of life [see Evaluating India ETFs: Three Important Factors To Consider].

SCIN's struggles in 2011 allow investors to tap into this investment theme at a big discount; this fund has lost more than 40% of its value in 2011 as a result of inflation-related concerns, corruption, and general risk aversion. India is frustrating to many investors: a massive economy with tremendous untapped economic potential that has repeatedly stumbled in its attempt to increase its presence on the global stage. SCIN could definitely have more short-term volatility ahead, but this fund could deliver some impressive returns to those willing and able to hold on for the long haul.

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According to the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi, there were three types of leadership: humane authority, hegemony and tyranny. Humane authority won the hearts and minds of the people at home and abroad. Tyranny -- based on military force -- inevitably created enemies. Hegemonic powers lay in between: they did not cheat the people at home or cheat allies abroad. But they were frequently indifferent to moral concerns and often used violence against non-allies. The philosophers generally agreed that humane authority would win in any competition with hegemony or tyranny.

In other countries, China must display humane authority in order to compete with the United States, which remains the world's pre-eminent hegemonic power. Military strength underpins hegemony and helps to explain why the United States has so many allies. President Obama has made strategic mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but his actions also demonstrate that Washington is capable of leading three foreign wars simultaneously. By contrast, China's army has not been involved in any war since 1984, with Vietnam, and very few of its high-ranking officers, let alone its soldiers, have any battlefield experience.

Continue reading "Three types of leadership: humane authority, hegemony and tyranny." »

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My family has owned four Civics over the last 20 years. Every month I pay $347.66 on my daily driver, a Civic Si sedan I bought new back in 2008. With this new, indifferent Civic, alongside the hulking second-generation Pilot sport utility; the Insight, a cut-rate Prius clone; and virtually all of the current Acura models, Honda seems intent on eradicating its own distinctiveness.

Where is the Honda that built the sophisticated Prelude sporty coupe, the intuitive S2000 roadster, the overachieving Integra Type R and the world-beating NSX supercar? The Honda where keeping things simple also meant better quality, thoughtful detailing, exquisite engineering and delightful mechanical operation?

I want that Honda back.

Continue reading "Honda losing its way" »

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Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo-Narita and Shanghai are among other spots in Asia with similar railway links. And this is where it gets depressing. Why can't American airports have public transport like this? Even our most expensive efforts are half-assed by comparison. Compare the best of Asia with, for example, my hometown airport, Boston-Logan. My commute to the airport by public transportation takes almost an hour and requires two changes, including a ride on the Silver Line bus, which, in addition to being at the mercy of automobile traffic, requires, at one point, that the driver step out and manually switch power sources to the bus.

Or how about JFK, where for hundreds of millions of dollars they finally got the AirTrain completed -- an inter-terminal rail loop that can't take you beyond the Queens subway. Heck, it can take 45 minutes, up and down a byzantine array of escalators, elevators and passageways, just to get from one terminal to another, let alone all the way to Manhattan. The distance from Shanghai airport to the city is about 20 miles -- roughly the mileage from JFK to midtown. Shanghai's bullet train covers this distance in seven minutes.

Continue reading "Why can't American airports have public transport like this?" »

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"People say that those who live in Taro will encounter a tsunami twice in their lives," Ms. Araya said. "That's the fate of people born in Taro."

Perhaps because it was their fate, because they were used to rising from tsunamis every few generations, some of those walking on the sea wall were already thinking about the future.

Ryuju Yamamoto, 66, peered down, trying to spot his house below, but was more interested in talking about the woman he was wooing. A tatami-mat maker, he pointed below to a spot where he had found his dresser and tatami mat, as well as a doll he had received as a wedding gift three decades ago. His father had forced him into an arranged marriage, he said, that lasted 40 days.

"I learned that she already had this," he said, pointing to his thumb, signifying a boyfriend. "And she refused to break it off."

WORLD

In Japan, Seawall Offered a False Sense of Security

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 31, 2011
A Japanese town's faith in a seawall and its ability to save residents from any tsunami was so unshakable, that some rushed toward it after the earthquake struck.

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SEC's Smart Step at Fighting China Fraud
By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor12/22/10 - 08:12 AM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission took a step in the right direction this week by punishing a small U.S. audit firm for work it had done for a Chinese company.

The SEC's settlement with Moore Stephens Wurth Frazer & Torbet LLP of Orange County is related to overstatements of financial results that China Energy Savings Technology made in 2004 and 2005.

Last month, I wrote in RealMoney that there were many small U.S. auditors operating in China that are basically a joke. They are not performing audits in the manner an average person would expect them to be done. In many cases -- not just a few -- I believe that these audit firms are simply signing off on numbers given to them by management to bank their auditing fees (which can be up to $300,000 for one year from one client) and in the hopes of winning new clients from that company's pre-IPO investors.

These cases appear to be isolated to the smaller-capitalization Chinese companies who initially go public in a reverse takeover (RTO) of an existing shell company on the over-the-counter (OTC) exchange with the intention of later uplisting to the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange.

The SEC's action on Monday likely is the tip of the iceberg of its investigations into this area.

-- breakoutperformance.

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Like tank commanders giving shout outs through the fog of the battlefield

Consider a fascinating study of the text messaging behavior of Tokyo teenagers that was conducted as part of a much larger investigation of "digital youth" by Mimi Ito, the late Peter Lyman and their colleagues. The kids text back and forth all day. What are they writing? What is so pressing that it can't wait till they see each other?

Anthropologists looking at the matter were surprised to discover that the kids rarely send informative or detailed messages. As a general rule, they are not telling each other anything. Rather, they are just letting each other know that they are "there," that they are online, in reach. Texting for the kids is a way of "pinging" each other. They bounce pings back and forth and so signal their presence for each other.

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Originally performed as a Shinto ritual to entertain the gods so they would bestow a good harvest, the game dates back well over a thousand years. It is a trial of strength in which 48 techniques may be used to throw an opponent off balance so that he steps out of the ring or falls to the ground. A match begins with a head-on collision, followed by a wild fit of shoving, lifting, throwing, tripping, slapping, yanking or any combination thereof. It is often over in less than 10 seconds but can last a minute or more.

An 18-year-old high school senior from Tottori, Yuka Ueta, was the strongest wrestler of the tournament. At 275 pounds, she plowed her way through five matches in the open weight class, dispatching each opponent within moments to earn her first gold medal in the senior group.

Continue reading "Lady Sumo" »

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David Choe's asian logo (bio).

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Instead, they seize property in parts of the city they deem "unhygienic and unsafe," rezone much of it as commercial property and sell it for huge profits. The concession to history often consists of a few new buildings with upturned eaves and garishly painted timber slapped on concrete facades.

Aarguments have had limited impact on this redevelopment-crazed city. In recent years, two-thirds of Beijing's 3,000 narrow lanes, known as hutongs, have been subsumed by mega-developments, many of them in neighborhoods that were officially designated preservation zones.

Continue reading "Beijing edition of Queens' Crap." »

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Vaseline launches skin-whitening Facebook India app
(AFP) - 15 hours ago

NEW DELHI -- Skincare group Vaseline has introduced a skin-lightening application for Facebook in India, enabling users to make their skin whiter in their profile pictures.
The download is designed to promote Vaseline's range of skin-lightening creams for men, a huge and fast-growing market driven by fashion and a cultural preference for fairer skin.

The widget promises to "transform your face on Facebook with Vaseline Men" in a campaign fronted by Bollywood actor Shahid Kapur, who is depicted with his face divided into dark and fair halves.
"We started campaign advertising (for the application) from the second week of June and the response has been pretty phenomenal," Pankaj Parihar from global advertising firm Omnicom, which designed the campaign, told AFP.

In 2005, Indian cosmetics giant Emani launched the first skin-whitening cream for men, called "Fair and Handsome", 27 years after the first cream for women.
Since then a half dozen foreign brands have piled into the market for men, including Garnier, L'Oreal and Nivea, which promote the seemingly magical lightening qualities of their products in ubiquitous advertising.

In 2009, a poll of nearly 12,000 people by online dating site Shaadi.com, revealed that skin tone was considered the most important criteria when choosing a partner in three northern Indian states.

Continue reading "Skin-whitening Facebook India app" »

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Human-flesh search engines -- renrou sousuo yinqing -- have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath.

The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences. Searches have been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system. Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China.

Posted to Asia, search, words.

Continue reading "renrou sousuo yinqing (Human-flesh search engines)" »

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"India can seem to have a fairly ambiguous and chaotic way of working, but it works," Ms. Bansal said. "I've heard people say things like 'It is so inefficient or it is so unprofessional.' " She said it was more constructive to just accept customs as being different.

...

"Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations," said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found a business newspaper called Mint, which is now the country's second-biggest business paper by readership.

He said he left earlier than he expected because of a "troubling nexus" of business, politics and publishing that he called "draining on body and soul." He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.

Continue reading "India to Indians: give up and accept it the way it is ?" »

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Mr. Liu calculated that his score leaped by more than 100 points over last year's dismal performance. But he was still downcast, uncertain whether he would make the cutoff to apply to top-tier universities. The cutoff mark can vary by an applicant's place of residence and ethnicity.
Ms. Li, on the other hand, was exhilarated by her estimate of 482.5, figuring it was probably high enough for admittance to a college of the second rank.

Posted to Fair and Asia.

Continue reading "Affirmative gao kao (the high test)" »

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In one case last month, the reports say, 410 Rohingya migrants were taken out to sea on a Thai Navy vessel and forced onto an open barge with just four barrels of water and two sacks of rice.

Four people were thrown overboard with their hands and feet tied as a way to encourage the others to board the barge, according to the reports.

After drifting for two weeks, about 100 of the migrants were rescued on the Andaman Islands, which are administered by India. About 300 remain missing after trying to swim to shore, according to several reports from the news media and human rights groups.

In a second case soon afterward, 580 people were reportedly seized off the Thai coast on three overcrowded fishing boats. These were towed back out to sea after their engines were removed, said Chris Lewa, an expert on Rohingya issues who runs a private human rights group called the Arakan Project.

Continue reading "Thailand overcomes migrants" »

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In Beijing, it didn't matter what the Dow was, of course, since the Chinese government's decision to make itself the world's leading patron of architecture was dependent on other things, including cheap labor. In time for the 2008 Olympics, the world saw the fruits of China's decision to put aside nationalism, hire the greatest architects from around the world, and let them do the kind of things they could never afford to do at home. That brought us two of the greatest buildings of the year, Herzog and de Meuron's extraordinary Olympic Stadium, the stunning steel latticework structure widely known as the Bird's Nest; and Norman Foster's Beijing Airport, a project that was not only bigger than any other airport in the world, but more beautiful, more logically laid out, and more quickly built. And the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture--a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism--turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism.

-- Paul Goldberger, the New Yorker's architecture critic.

Continue reading "Best building, 2008: Peking International Express" »

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The Dojinkai is one of the country's 22 crime syndicates, employing some 85,000 members and recognized by the government.

Traditionally, the yakuza have run protection rackets, as well as gambling, sex and other businesses that the authorities believed were a necessary part of any society. By letting the yakuza operate relatively freely, the authorities were able to keep an extremely close watch on them.

Continue reading "Traditionally, the yakuza have run protection rackets, as well as gambling, sex and other businesses" »

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Fashion publicity gets publicity where the goods are richer
than the models.

The juxtaposition between poverty and growing wealth presents
an unsavory dilemma for luxury goods makers jumping into India.

Expect follow-ups on Rate A Desi or Sepia Mutiny.

Continue reading "Fashion in Vogue, India" »

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Jadi points to Tehran.

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"To be a world-class city we need to have good quality housing",
Ajay Maken said in an interview in his office in an upscale part of Delhi
where power failures are rare and the water supply is good (although
wild monkeys dance on the cars of officials outside, resistant
to all campaigns to banish them).

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Peking Duck, China-centric Asian blog.

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BEIJING (AP) -- Foreigners in Beijing will be limited to buying
a single home for their own use under new curbs imposed amid
efforts to slow a surge in housing costs, newspapers reported
Saturday.

Foreign home-buyers in Beijing will have to prove they have lived
in China for a year for work or study, and will be barred from
renting out the property, the Beijing Morning Post and China
Daily newspapers said.

Continue reading "China curbs urban housing demand" »

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East Indian blogging by sepiamutiny, example.

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Raw like sushi: Ani Phyo.

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urbandictionary is looking good.

Collaborative nature compels user contributions
and feedback, thumbsupping or thumbsdowning
competing definitions on clarity, detail, and
plausibility (for the zero information set) or
accuracy (for those in the know.

The freshness of the content poses a challenge
o the traditional dictionary.

Its information architecture lists adjacent and
related words, and offers endless serendipity.

Example: garaigo.

Continue reading "Urban Dictionary" »

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Korean bbq place in Flushing, Queens. Recommended.

San Hai Jin Mi
36-24 Union Street,
Flushing, Queens, NY 11354
(on Union just south of Northern Blvd. )
ph 718-539-3274

Great bulgogi and they’re open 24 hours as well though they
are not set up for tourists like the ones on K-town 32nd Street.

Continue reading "Bulgogi Korean BBQ beef in Flushing, Queens" »

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hanzi smatter or hanzis matter ?
Proofreads tatoos, ex post.

勢 (power; force; tendency) and 夢 (dream).

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ThatsShanghai guide to Bejing, Guangzhou and of course Shanghai.
With an xpat perspective.

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Shanghaiist, Gothamist of the East: *; examples:
Shanghai Daily, amusing Chinglish: *

And fake StarBucks. (bb has more Starbucks clones).

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This Republican Theme Park from America is My Girlfriend by Jasik.

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As many road geeking opportunities as California ?

Continue reading "Shanghai Roads" »

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Sinosplice: worthy of blogrolling: updates
Ape Rifle / China-on-the-Thames / ode to VW Santana (Dasher/Quantum/Passat ?) /
Montreal over Toronto / subtle subtitles

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An investigation of the not-so-subtle bad architecture in Beijing.

Continue reading "bad architecture in Beijing" »

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Chinese Triad photo journal.

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Sarong Party Girl, sarongpartygirl.

Update 2009: moved to Babelogic and learned to draw.

Continue reading "Sarong Party Girl" »

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All Look Same's classification exercise for 20 stock photos:
test yourself.

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Why do you worship the ground I blog on or the geekery ?

Xiaxue won an asian bloggie award, topped the defunct Gweilo Diaries.
Definately a cannonical example of chatty look-at-me writing,
from Singapore. It's raining men! And the shopping ! Now that's
Sassy!

Press clippings folder.

Endorsers: Zapped, Google Blogoscoped.

Detractors: C(h)ristine, antistereotype (Auntie Stereotype?) 1, 2.

Continue reading "xiaxue / Wendy Cheng" »

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Tim Blair / Spleenville, lively and colourfull blogger from Australia has a new blog.

Continue reading "Tim Blair / Spleenville" »

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