Ok, so maybe I am dead.

It's been a fun year, but I think I'll be closing this blog down. Work, new exercise regimine, and general lack of time and motivation is generally crimping on my ability to post. So unless I find a ghost-blogger, it looks like lights out for the indeterminate future.

I'm not dead

well, at least not yet. If not back, avenge my death!

3.5 kilograms in a week

Thats the weight I've lost. Unfortunately I'm not trying to lose weight persay (a beneficial side effect) but rather build up physical endurance. So far, my running time has only witnessed a marginal improvement. Is there a specific diet I should be using? Right now I'm eating fruits and veges plus lots of protein from different sources such as eggs, nuts, tofu, fish, and the triumvirate of yumminess: pork, chicken, and beef (I splurged on saturday and had duck, still feeling guilty about it). I've managed to avoid most carbs except for the 4% per serving from my non-fat low calorie yoghurt. The stuff is crazy calorie deficient, only 60 calories for a 6 ounce serving. Naturally it has to taste like crap so I alternate it with the non-fat slightly higher calori yoplait at 100 calories per 6 oz. My daily caloric intake is also lower than usual due to the absence of rice. Maybe 1000-1500 calories per day, sometimes less though I did splurge on the weekend. This would explain the rapid weight loss, but should I increase my caloric intake to build endurance or do I just need more protein? Pretty much everything I'm eating now has protein in it and I'm not sure how I can add more.

中华民国万岁!

Interesting if true, not so much if false. In either case, more incindiary material from the Taidu Times.

The nation's top military leader yesterday threw his weight behind claims of a coup plot by pan-blue supporters after the bitterly disputed presidential election in 2004.

During a legislative hearing, Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (李傑) yesterday said that some military personnel had approached him and asked him to feign sickness and step aside so that they could organize a coup against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

On Monday, a second hearing began at the Taiwan High Court in a suit filed by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) against Chen Shui-bian. They claim that he defamed them by asserting that there had been an attempted coup d'etat following their defeat in the election.

At Monday's hearing, Chen's lawyer showed the judge classified documents that he claimed proved the coup attempt.

He claimed that the classified documents clearly record persons, happenings, times, locations and evidence of the coup attempt.

The Liberty Times, a Chinese-language newspaper and the sister paper of the Taipei Times, yesterday reported that the classified documents said an "incumbent military adviser to the Presidential Office" and a former chief of the general staff had talked to Lee Jye and asked him to step aside on March 24, 2004.

Lee Jye, who was Chief of General Staff at the time, yesterday confirmed these reports.

"Some unidentified military personnel came to me and asked me to `play sick' so they could carry out their plans to oust the president. But, when I refused immediately, they just walked away," Lee said. "These people said that they came to me on behalf of `certain group of people.'"

However, Lee said that neither former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) nor People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) had approached him or sent anyone to see him on their behalf. But he said he was quite sure that the military personnel who came to him were pan-blue supporters.

"However, I couldn't say whether these military personnel came to me on behalf of Lien and Soong," Lee added.

The minister made his remarks after being questioned by KMT Legislator Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) on the legislative floor yesterday. Sun said that he had read the newspaper reports that some high-ranking military personnel had approached Lee and asked him to step aside by "pretending to be sick" so that the military could mutiny against the president by refusing to obey his orders.

Chen had previously claimed that high-ranking pan-blue military personnel had tried to carry out a `soft coup' after the 2004 presidential election, and that the effort was encouraged by Lien and Soong.

In November 2004, the president said that some retired generals had tried to convince high-ranking military officials to resign or fake illness and check into the hospital after the 2004 presidential election.

According to Chen, the purpose of this was to create social instability to negate the legitimacy of his re-election.

Then defense minister Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明) submitted his resignation immediately after the presidential election citing an eye disease.

DPP Legislator Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) had said at a press conference that three admirals and eight lieutenant generals had been asked to resign or pretend they were ill after the presidential election. However, no military officials followed Tang and offered their resignations, which Lee Wen-chung attributed to the successful nationalization of the military.

News reports had reported that three deputy chiefs of the general staff at the time -- military adviser to the president Admiral Fei Hung-po (費鴻波), MND deputy-minister Admiral Chu Kai-sheng (朱凱生) and Chief of the Air force General Liu Kuei-li (劉貴立) were the key targets that had been asked to resign.

Then Deputy Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-mi (陳肇敏) was also reported to have been encouraged to resign. Chen Chao-mi joined the pan-blue controlled March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee shortly after he retired from the military.

News reports also alleged that Tang had summoned a number of high-ranking military officials to his residence to discuss the matter, before he announced his resignation.

In November 2004, Former defense minister Chiang Chung-ling (蔣仲苓) asked the president to confront him in public in order to clarify accusations that he had planned a "soft coup d'etat" after the March 20 presidential election.

This would not be the first alleged coup attempt by the RoC army. It was rumored that there was another close call during the early 90's where an attempt to depose then "president" Lee Teng Hui was disarmed by James Soong. Unfortunately for the DPP and pro-independence minded individuals, the RoC Army remains a bastion of Chinese Nationalism with its officer corps once heavily intertwined with the KMT. The old guards may be gone and many of the senior officers have been replaced yet the army remains a strongly conservative institution. The tradition of the RoC army is deeply tied to the mainland, with units still bearing insignia and designations that date from the Chinese civil war. One of the most critical steps for the DPP to take is to restructure the armed forces completely and change it into a "Taiwanese" military with its own traditions, rather than having an army whose loyalty is possibly to an ideology not compatible with an independent Taiwan.

Anyone have any running tips?

I've started a new exercise regimine recently trying to get my sorry self back into shape but the hardest part I've found is the running. I've not been an adequate runner since I was maybe 12 and as of now I'm averaging a pitiful 20 minute mile. (Well I've only been at it for 3 days now). Any exercise buffs know whats the best way to get yourself into shape to run and how to increase endurance? Will it just come naturally the more I run? Because right now I find myself running out of breath after just a few minutes. (Hey my job involves me sitting in front of a computer all day).

I wonder how it would taste in a stir fry...

Chinese food jokes never get passe, an hour later you're hungry for more!

*drum beats*

May even have to fight off the French for them.

LONDON (Reuters) - Bats, whales and dolphins use it to communicate. Baby rodents call their mothers with it and now a rare Chinese frog has shown it can hear and respond to ultrasounds, scientists said on Wednesday. The frog, Amolops tormotus, is the first non-mammalian species known to use the ultra-high frequencies that humans cannot hear.

It comes in handy to be heard above the pounding waterfalls and streams in the mountainous region of east-central China where Amolops tormotus, which is known as the concave-eared torrent frog, lives.

"Nature has a way of evolving mechanisms to facilitate communication in very adverse situations," said Professor Albert Feng of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"One way is to shift the frequencies beyond the spectrum of the background noise. Mammals such as bats, whales and dolphins do this, and use ultrasound for their sonar system and communication."

But until now it was not known that some frogs were able to use ultrasound.

Kraig Adler, a biologist at Cornell University in New York, first noticed the frog with no external eardrums while surveying amphibians in China. He told Feng, an auditory neuroscientist who studies frogs and bats, about his find.

Feng and his colleagues conducted tests on the frogs to determine whether they could hear and respond to ultrasounds.

"Now we are getting a better understanding of why their ear drums are recessed," said Feng, who reported his findings in the journal Nature.

"Thin eardrums are needed for detection of ultrasound. Recessed ears shorten the path between eardrums and the ear, enabling the transmission to the ears," he added in a statement.

Ultrasounds are high-pitched sounds of more than 20 kilohertz (kHz) frequency -- much higher than the frequency most birds, reptiles and amphibians can hear.

Why I am (probably) an evil heartless bastard

A little news from the home front that doesn't relate to the main theme
Of the blog but is somewhat interesting to me (alright I admit, I'm running short on material). I received some information from an intermediary of some rather dreary news. The daughter of an acquaintance of my mother’s hers has unfortunately contracted some type of brain tumor, a rare enough ailment one compounded by the fact that the daughter is just now barely in her 20's. The intermediary was fairly emotional about the whole affair, being weepy after she first heard about the news from her friend, yet I found myself totally apathetic to the situation. My first thought of the unfortunate girl was that she wasn't taking it very well. She had been going through emotional swings, long bouts of crying, and wasn't eating. Fair enough for someone confronting what could very well be a terminal condition, yet I could not help thinking that if I were in her position, I would certainly be facing things more stoically. I have always considered myself to possessing a fatalistic attitude towards life and while my experiences in regards to death have been blessedly few and far between, none of them have ever fazed me in the slightest. It's an interesting philosophical situation where man and woman in this case can have entirely divergent response to the same predicament. I have heard it said before that women, when faced with crisis situations such as this, tend to become hysterical or otherwise lock up. Men on the other hand tend to be more resigned to their lot and soldier on as they were until the end. I am not sure whether this is an example social-conditioning or perhaps something more metaphysical is at the heart of it.

The other interesting factor in this whole affair is the sheer sadistic irony of it all. If you'll pardon the imagery but when shit happens, it flows like runny diarrhea. What would otherwise be a picture perfect upper-middle class family has been laid low by a string of ill-fated circumstance. The family owned a medical practice which has only recently gone under due to lack of business. The girl herself attends an Ivy League school and is preparing to attend medical school soon only to be diagnosed with a brain tumor. Worse yet, she does not have medical insurance and the financial and emotional costs of this could very well destroy their up until now serene family. The coup de grace would be if the IRS found out that their family owes what is likely hundreds of thousands in back taxes (virtually every Chinese family running a small business is hiding taxable income).I bear her and her family no ill will let alone malice enough to exult in their predicament, yet their fall from grace is not without a sliver of schadenfreud. My mother used to constantly compare me to other children of her acquaintances usually to my detriment, as Chinese mothers are wont to do. He went to Harvard, she went to MIT, her daughter earns 340,000 thousand dollars a year, her son is studying to become a doctor. I am not such a knave to wish her ill solely on account of my mother's hectoring; its water off a duck's back. Yet there is an undeniable sense of amusement in witnessing this disaster in what would otherwise be another very ordinary day.