Year: 2025

Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)

Ever since arriving in Hangzhou in December 2022, I’ve been noticing stuff about cars here, and I’ve been meaning to share my observations.

Therefore, here are some facts about the automotive landscape in China (especially Hangzhou):

In addition to imported vehicles and vehicles produced in cooperation with foreign automakers, China has a lot of domestically produced car brands. I’d heard of them because I edited news articles for China Knowledge, an English-language news portal offering business, financial, and real-estate news about China. But to see all the different designs in person is dizzying. Never knew there could be so many different shapes of taillights. (LEDs have changed the world.)

There are “cars” on the road that are tiny, some with only three wheels. These glorified golf carts are mysteriously ubiquitous despite not being road legal. (Apparently, they have recently been officially banned in Beijing.)

Some courier vehicles have no driver. These may start to replace the much more numerous three-wheeled courier vehicles that do have drivers. (But who unloads them, I want to know??? Seems like you’ve still got a last-mile problem.)

There are many consumer model vehicles with AI self-driving features. “Already today, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles in the Chinese market are equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios.”

There are often mechanical shelves for cars in underground parking garages to increase capacity. (They are super annoying to park in because you have to back in, and you have to do it very precisely, because there’s only about 6 inches of space on either side of the car. Miss and you damage your tire or rim—happened to Siqi twice.)

There are no vanity license plates, but sometimes the license plate kinda spells something by accident. My brain constantly wants the alphanumeric inscriptions to be real words; they’re usually not. Electric and hybrid cars have green/white license plates, whereas petrol cars have blue license plates. There are a lot of EVs in Hangzhou, maybe 20%-30%. (Here’s a 2022 report with some statistics.)

The highway infrastructure continually amazes me. It’s new, it’s massive, and from what I’ve seen, there’s no graffiti.

Intrigued? See below for 25 photos of vehicles and vehicle infrastructure.

Continue reading Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)

Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

This is one of those books where you know what’s going on, but you have to wait a long time for the characters in the story to catch up. Sigh.

The title is the nickname given to a lawyer who settles in a small town but fails to achieve success because the locals think he’s weird. Partly, he is; as a hobby, he takes people’s fingerprints and compares them. The townspeople aren’t as clever as they think they are, so it’s ironic that they give the young lawyer a nickname that disparages his intelligence (see below). But the book isn’t about the lawyer.

The book is about two boys, one “white” and one “black”, who change places, kind of like the boys in The Prince and the Pauper. This time, however, the change is deliberate on the part of the mother of the “black” boy, who swaps him for her employer’s son to give her own son a better life. That doesn’t really turn out well for anyone, except maybe the lawyer; everyone has to admit that his fingerprinting hobby is actually quite useful for identification purposes.

The “I see where this is going” plot made me impatient, and the dishonest mother and her spoiled son are somewhat and very irritating, respectively. However, the setting is interesting; the themes are interesting; the lawyer is interesting; and the dialect dialog is interesting. Moreover, the wry observations in the narration are interesting (see below).

Continue reading Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read Pudd’nhead Wilson

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American Literature
Date started / date finished: 29-Mar-25 to 30-Mar-25
Length: 119 pages
ISBN:
Originally published in: 1894/2004/2023

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

I’m gradually learning that Mark Twain is not exactly my cup of tea, but I have to say, this was a fun book.

Most time-travelers try to pretend they fit in and generally avoid introducing anachronisms. Either they’re just there as spectators to soak it all in on the reader’s behalf, or they’re caught up helplessly in large-scale historical events and are simply trying survive while attempting to return to the time and place where they belong—or, likely, both. But not the guy in this book! He remakes the whole world in his own image. And you know what? More power to him. The past is a terrible place.

Soon, I’ll read Ivanhoe and see how Walter Scott depicts Medieval England. Some Googling indicates that it’s not wholly accurate (though it has many accurate details), and that it romanticizes the past, but that not everything is shown in a positive light.

See below for some quotes I pulled out of Connecticut Yankee that I found amusing or insightful (or both).

Continue reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 23-Mar-25 to 29-Mar-25
Length: 462 pages
ISBN: B0756Z7ZNY
Originally published in: 1889/2017
Amazon link: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

While I admire the intent of the novel, and enjoyed the story as historical fiction to some extent, the theme of injustice came across as overly didactic—and of course the whole plot relies on the absurd coincidence that there exists a literate pauper who looks like the twin brother of the heir to the throne of Henry VIII.

Still, the story is a powerful reminder that, as they say, The clothes make the man. See below for more thoughts on this theme, and a bit more information on the premise, including a sample of the Shakespearean-esque dialog of the novel.

Continue reading The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Prince and the Pauper

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 21-Mar-25 to 22-Mar-25
Length: 226 pages
ISBN: B075CMK533
Originally published in: 1881/2017
Amazon link: The Prince and the Pauper

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The book is about the titular character, and is set in a town in 1840s Missouri. While I have been a Southerner, I have never have been a mischievous little boy. Therefore, I find Tom Sawyer’s daily life a little difficult to relate to. But that’s what books are for: they let you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Or bare feet, as the case may be.

Even if you’ve never read a word of the book, or watched a movie adaptation, you probably already know about Tom’s cleverness in getting his pals to paint a fence on his behalf. But did you know that Tom witnesses a murder? And goes on a holiday from civilization on an island in a river? And finds stolen treasure in a cave with miles of tunnels? There’s plenty of entertainment in the plot.

The themes relate to honor and honesty, about doing the right thing when it matters, and not worrying too much about phony social rules as long as you take care of the people you care about.

Meanwhile, throughout the novel, Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens, if you prefer), offers, in deadpan style, a number of sharp observations of human nature. See below for some examples.

Continue reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 18-Mar-25 to 20-Mar-25
Length: 248 pages
ISBN: B072F1WKW1
Originally published in: 1876/2017
Amazon link: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels, originally published in 1727, is in the public domain. Using the Android Kindle app on my phone, I read the AmazonClassics ebook shown above, which I downloaded during the Covid lockdowns when Amazon made a bunch of classic ebooks available to download for free. However, this Amazon ebook does not include the illustration in Part 3, Chapter 5 of the automatic writing machine, which features in another blog post of mine. I therefore recommend the Standard Ebooks version of Gulliver’s Travels, which does include this illustration, and which, moreover, is free. (Standard Ebooks offers a growing selection of Gutenberg ebooks that have been noticeably improved in terms of proofreading, typesetting, cover design, etc. All free.)

Where does Gulliver go? Are his travels funny? What’s Jonathan Swift trying to say, anyway? (Do I even like satire at all?) Does the book resemble the 1939 animated film adaptation? Find the answers to these questions below.

Continue reading Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

When and Why I Read Gulliver's Travels

I know a little about Gulliver's Travels by cultural osmosis, but that's not the same as having actually read it! I know that Lilliputian means 'diminutive' because Lilliput is a place full of small people who famously tie Gulliver down (and that brobdingnagian means 'huge' because Brobdingnag is a place full of huge people). I've heard of houyhnhnms, and about some kind of mechanical word machine that people use for writing. It's time to fill in the gaps.

Genre: English literature / satire
Date started / date finished: 10-Mar-25 to 17-Mar-25
Length: 306 pages
ISBN: B073WW8W3R
Originally published in: 1726/2017
Amazon link: Gulliver's Travels

Chicago (2002)

Recently I made the mistake of listening to the soundtrack of Chicago on my computer. The songs are incredibly sticky. Hearing the songs echoing in my head for several days, I decided I wanted to rewatch the movie itself. This, of course, just reinforced the echoes in my head.

Watching the movie, I decided my favorite song, because of its sheer energy, was “Cell Block Tango,” which repeatedly insists that “he had it coming.”

Also, I remembered that, although the movie is incredibly good at what it does, I actually really don’t like the characters. See below for more on that.

According to Wikipedia, the movie is based on a 1975 stage musical, which is based on a 1926 play, which is based on some actual events in the news.

Continue reading Chicago (2002)

John Wick Chapter 4 (2023)

I remember bits and pieces of the previous John Wick movies, perhaps the first one especially, but they don’t have a lot of plot or dialog. They are mostly full of stylized violent action. Some of it’s cool and some of it’s too brutal for my taste, but I like the character, and I like Keanu Reeves.

Siqi and I saw this movie when it was newly released in theaters in China (two years after its US release). According to Wikipedia, it’s the first of the series to be released in China at all. Apparently the reason it was allowed to be shown, and the basis for a lot of the marketing, is the fact that it stars popular Hong Kong Chinese actor Donnie Yen.

Mind Matters by Michael S. Gazzaniga

The famous Berkeley psychologist David Krech once made the observation, “There is no phenomenon, however complex, which when examined carefully will not turn out to be even more complex.”
—Mind Matters (page 175)

How much has our understanding of brains progressed since the publication of this popular science book in 1988? Maybe a little, but many studies serve to reveal effects without shedding light on their causes, or otherwise uncover new unknowns. Complete understanding of the connection between the brain and the mind, and the mind/brain’s connection to the body, will, I think, always be just over the horizon, like world peace, the cure for cancer, and flying cars—especially if we keep talking about brains as computers (which Gazzaniga does in the first paragraph of his introduction), but that’s another story.

Meanwhile, brain scientist Michael S. Gazzaniga offers his thoughts, informed by his professional experience, on twelve relatable subjects:

  1. Pain
  2. Memory and Thinking after Forty
  3. Intelligence
  4. Crazy Thoughts
  5. Anxiety
  6. Depression
  7. Obsessions and Compulsions
  8. Addiction
  9. Love
  10. Sleeping and Dreaming
  11. Stress
  12. Healing

It’s an interesting bunch of topics. The chapter on addiction was surprisingly political. Gazzaniga makes a case for legalizing drugs (and taxing them) to prevent the harms that arise from black markets (and funding programs for treatment of addiction). He says addiction is not the sort of thing that can snowball into an epidemic. From his standpoint, some small, stable percentage of people will inevitably be addicts; meanwhile everyone else is pretty much okay.

Gazzaniga’s writing is informed in part by his work on split-brain studies. Ever heard about those? Some epileptics have undergone surgery to disconnect the two normally connected brain hemispheres to reduce the occurrence of debilitating seizures. Studies conducted on such subjects involve presenting a picture or instructions to only one half—the left half—of the visual system (thus to only one half—the right half—of the brain). The result is spurious explanations supplied by the left half, which controls language, for the individual’s response. Somewhere in the left half of the brain is a mind module that really wants things to make sense, even when they don’t. Gazzaniga calls this module “the interpreter”.

The book offers a framework that considers both psychology and neurobiology in explaining “a wide variety of very personal mind states we all experience at one time or another.” It acknowledges individual differences due to brain development as well as genetic influences on brain chemistry.

I’m looking forward to reading a more recent book by Gazzaniga: The Consciousness Instinct.

When and Why I Read Mind Matters

Another brain-related book!

Genre: cognitive science
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 13-Mar-25
Length: 244 pages
ISBN: 0395500958
Originally published in: 1988
Amazon link: Mind Matters

She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard

How did I come to read this book?

I read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne because it’s on a lot of lists of classic books, and I’ve read other top Verne books, but not this one.

Then, because I somehow thought Journey to the Center of the Earth had more dinosaurs in it, I read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, which is possibly the one I was thinking of.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle made me think of Michael Crichton’s novels The Lost World and also Congo, which I read in 2010.

Congo was (according to Wikipedia) inspired by King Solomon’s Mines, a novel by H. Rider Haggard, which I’ve also repeatedly seen on lists of classic books, so I read King Solomon’s Mines.

Then, because the novel She is by the same author as King Solomon’s Mines, and I’ve seen it on lists of classics (some indicating that it was an early science-fiction or early feminist novel), I read it too.

Phew!

Overall impression? What a creepy story. Really not my style.

There were some interesting psychological/philosophical observations, and some poetic, if melancholy, descriptive passages, but mainly the atmosphere was, in general, unpleasantly macabre. The physical surroundings of the characters consisted almost entirely of caves and tombs, except when the characters were traveling on stormy seas or across mosquito-infested swamps. There is no joy in this book whatsoever; the survival of the narrator is a matter of narrow escape—of relief rather than victory. But maybe that’s the point? Reading the book is like passing through a haunted house: you frighten yourself thoroughly with impossibilities, and then return to the real world with a new appreciation for normalcy.

So yeah. Well done, H. Rider Haggard. Thanks, I hate it.

See below for some more specific observations on this unsettling book from 1886.

Continue reading She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard

When and Why I Read She: A History of Adventure

This is the other famous book by the author of King Solomon's Mines.

Genre: classic adventure
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 08-Mar-25
Length: 245 pages
ISBN:
Originally published in: 1886/2006/2020