2011年5月29日 星期日

Nanjing Massacre--problem between Chinese and Japanese

The hatred between Chinese and Japanese seems to last for a very long time. Like I said before, when Japanese were suffering from Earthquake, the Chinese were celebrating the disaster that destroyed Japan. Why? The Nanjing Massacre is the most common event that the  Chinese bring up. They can't stand that the Chinese governments treat Japanese nicely after they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Chinese, especially people over 70 years old, hate the Japanese, because they cannot forget how the Japanese soldiers were during that 6 weeks of holocaust. I understand their hatred, because they've been through all these things. What I think is ering is that right now many Chinese teenagers hate because of the hatred. They cannot feel the pain that others suffered. They just hate everything, and what the Japanese did is only a good excuse for they to hate. I cannot feel the pain that these old people had suffered from, I cannot understand how much cruelty they've been through, but as a bystander, I would like to say to the Chinese new generation that we must remember the history, and forget the hatred. We can't let these kinds of things happened again. 

Nanjing Massacre--Inforgraphic



Nanjing Massacre--Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9HCBUgAFeQ

This is a link to the documentary that I made.

Nanjing Massacre-- News paper article

It need not have happened!!!




The Nanking massacre need not have happened.  Li Zhongyan(李仲言) said that Nanking was a "strategic dead-end" that was indefensible.  Why did the massacre take place?  Apart from the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers, the bureaucratic politics of the Chinese people is the other reason.
There are many sects within the Chinese military, just like today we have the British remnants, the Fujian native communists, the Shanghai gang and others in Hong Kong; they don't like each other and they try to derail each other. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) favored the Whampoa Military School officers, who were known as the Central Army and received special favors . Other sects such as Zhang Xueliang's(張學良) Northeastern Army, Fung Yujiang's (豐郁江) Northwestern Army, Li Zhongyan's (李仲言) Guizhou (貴州) Army, Chen Jitong's (陳其恫) Guangdong Army and Tong Sungzi's(唐生智) Sichuan Army were all other treated as outsiders.
When the Japanese army rolled in, the Northeastern Army's Zhang Xueliang (張學良) staged a mutiny and forced Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to fight the Japanese.  This made Chiang (蔣介石) even more antagonistic towards the non-Whampoa sects.  When the Japanese army approached Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) called for a military conference and asked for a volunteer to defend the city.  All the officers stayed quiet.  Chiang (蔣介石) glared at Tong Sungzi (唐生智), who was forced to stand up and say, "I will shall defend." And then he swore that he would defend Nanking to the death.
So Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) left Nanking and transferred the capital of the country to Wuhan (武漢).  Tong SIngzi (唐生智) sealed all the roads from Nanking to the north of the Yangtze River(長江) and he destroyed all the ferries.  So when the Japanese soldiers entered the city, the citizens of Nanking had nowhere to go.  But Tong Sungzi (唐生智) saved a boat for himself.  When Nanking fell, Tong(唐生智) got on the boat and left.  The defenders had no military command and surrendered.  When the Japanese army entered the city, they took the 50,000 to 60,000 Chinese prisoners of war to the shore of the Yangtze River and executed them, leaving the river filled with floating corpses and dyed blood red.

2011年3月20日 星期日

Lorenz Curve

In economics, the Lorenz curve is a graphical representation of the cumulative distribution function of the empirical probability distribution of wealth; it is a graph showing the proportion of the distribution assumed by the bottom y% of the values. It is often used to represent income distribution, where it shows for the bottom x% of households, what percentage y% of the total income they have. The percentage of households is plotted on the x-axis, the percentage of income on the y-axis. It can also be used to show distribution of assets. In such use, many economists consider it to be a measure of social inequality. It was developed by Max O. Lorenz in 1905 for representing inequality of the wealth distribution.
The concept is useful in describing inequality among the size of individuals in ecology, and in studies of biodiversity, where cumulative proportion of species is plotted against cumulative proportion of individuals. It is also useful in business modeling: e.g., in consumer finance, to measure the actual delinquency Y% of the X% of people with worst predicted risk scores.
Every point on the Lorenz curve represents a statement like "the bottom 20% of all households have 10% of the total income." A perfectly equal income distribution would be one in which every person has the same income. In this case, the bottom "N"% of society would always have "N"% of the income. This can be depicted by the straight line "y" = "x"; called the "line of perfect equality."
By contrast, a perfectly unequal distribution would be one in which one person has all the income and everyone else has none. In that case, the curve would be at "y" = 0 for all "x" < 100%, and "y" = 100% when "x" = 100%. This curve is called the "line of perfect inequality."
The Gini coefficient is the area between the line of perfect equality and the observed Lorenz curve, as a percentage of the area between the line of perfect equality and the line of perfect inequality. The higher the coefficient, the more unequal the distribution is.

2011年3月19日 星期六

311 Japan's 9.0 Earthquake

 I believe that everyone knows the 8.9 Earthquake that happened in Japan in March 11th, 2011. Three of the major coastal cities were been ruin totally. The earthquake was not the worst thing, coming after the earthquake was a huge tsunami and a big fire. One of the reasons why the earthquake causes such a huge damage to Japan is because Japan’s lands are lower than other countries’ lands. Also, because of the land reclamation in Japan, Japan’s coasts have a lot of man-made lands which are once ocean. These kinds of lands are not as stable as the original lands. Right now there are thousands of deaths and injures, and the rate is still rising.
  I think this article is important because this is a very serious disaster, not only to Japan, but also to the entire world. We can’t stop these kinds of natural disasters, but what can we do the best to decrease the death rate and the loss during the disaster? What can we do to save the mass amount of organisms? What can we do to cost the least damage? These are the major question that the world needs to discuss and cooperate.

Here is a link to a video that record about the earthquake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBGROIKdsOs

Scramble for Africa

The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa was a process of invasion, attack, occupation, and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914.
As a result of the heightened tension between European states in the last quarter of the 19th century, the partitioning of Africa may be seen as a way for the Europeans to eliminate the threat of a Europe-wide war over Africa.
The last 59 years of the nineteenth century saw transition from ‘informal imperialism’ of control through military influence and economic dominance to that of direct rule. Attempts to mediate imperial competition, such as the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), failed to establish definitively the competing powers' claims.
Many African polities, states and rulers (such as the Ashanti, the Abyssinians, the Moroccans and the Dervishes) sought to resist this wave of European aggression. However, the industrial revolution had provided the European armies with advanced weapons such as machine guns, which African armies found difficult to resist. Also, unlike their European counterparts, African rulers, states and people did not at first form a continental united front although within a few years, a Pan-African movement did emerge.