Tear Down This Wall

There have been lots of reporting and discussions of the 20^th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall (on Nov. 9^th, 1989). Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to surround the West Berlin and stop the escape of East German people from fleeing to the West. It was torn down 20 years ago that symbolized the collapse of Communism and end of the Cold War.

President Ronald Regan was a key figure in ending the cold war with Soviet Union. In his June 12 1987 historical speech at the Brandenburg Gate by the Berlin Wall, President Reagan openly challenged the supreme leader Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall as a symbol for increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc. He said: “… We welcome change and openness [note: this is referring to Gorbachev’s new 1986 “glasnost” policy after he came to power]; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!...”

Berlin Wall was 103 miles long and 12 feet high, complete with guard towers, anti-vehicle trenches and bed of nails, etc. In the 28 years of its existence, it did serve its purpose and made it extremely difficult for East German to escape using this route. More than 100 people were killed while trying to cross it to the west. To some extent it was an accident and a result of miscommunication by government officials that on Nov 9^th, instead of a later date, East German people demanded to cross the checkpoints of the Berlin Wall in such a mass that border soldiers weren’t able or dare to stop. Then people began to take down the wall, piece by piece.

The fall of Berlin Wall did not happen overnight. It wasn’t really due to any miraculous ideological conversion or armed rebellions by some. The reason was pure and simple – it is the well-being of the people. East Germany has had poor economic development under the Communist rule since end of WWII. The dissatisfication of its people reached the tipping point at late summer of 1989 that proved to be too much for any regime to bear.

Similar and parallel developments had taken places in other countries as well. Over 40 years of experimentation of communism in Russia, China, eastern Europe and so on had failed. Deng recognized it in China and began to reform in 1979; Gorbachev recognized it in Soviet Union and glasnost began in 1987. Poland’s Walesa recognized it and ignited the revolutions in 1989 of Central and Eastern Europe that reached East Germany in Nov, 1989. These leaders are now remembered in history as ones who contributed to the change for better. The hardliners who tried to hang onto their power, like East Germany’s Erich Honecker and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu stood on the wrong side of the history and are remembered as such.

Less than a year later, west and east Germany reunited to become one Germany. Ironically, British and French leaders Margret Thatcher and François Mitterrand were against it since they feared a unified Germany would change the power balance and British and French interests in Europe and the world.

The reunification of two Germanys of course offered a very interesting model for countries like the two Koreas and two Chinas - China and Taiwan. There are some parallels. For instance, they were all one unified country of same culture and ethnicity before end of WWII (yes, I am ignoring the colonization period and attempt by Japan). Japan and U.S. have not been that interested in seeing it happen for similar reasons that French and British did not want to see one unified Germany. There are some significant differences however. When the two Germanys reunited, the ratio of their GDP (PPP) per capita were about 2 to 1 while the ratio of their populations was about 4 to 1. In comparison, the ratio of two Koreas’ GDP (PPP) per capital is 15 to 1 and the ratio of populations is 2 to 1. The ratio of Taiwan’s and China’s GDP (PPP) per capital is about 4 to 1 while the population ratio is about 1 to 60. I can certainly see possible unification of China and Taiwan in another decade or so, if China continues to prosper and becomes a more open and free society.

Of course, there are still physical walls around the world and some are being built as we speak. To give you few examples, there is the Israeli West-Bank barrier of a target length of over 400 miles and the Mexico – United States barrier of a target length of 700 miles. When will these walls be torn down? That would be anyone’s guess.

Talk to you soon!

Rocket Scientist

We sometimes hear the expressions that suggest something is simple or someone is simple-minded as “this is not rocket science” or "it doesn't take a rocket scientist". A brilliant rocket scientist had just died. On Oct 31^st, Qian Xuesen錢學森aka H.S. (Hsue-shen) Tsien passed away in Beijing, China, a month or so before his 98^th birthday. The news did not attract much public attention and reporting in U.S. but for Chinese and those who followed the development of aerospace science and engineering, it is big. Qian has been called the Father of Chinese Space and Missile programs and was named the person of the year in 2007 by the trade magazine Aviation Week.

Qian was born in HangZhou, China in 1911 and studied mechanical engineering in Shanghai JiaoTong University. He later went to MIT in summer 1935 and obtained his M.S. in aerospace engineering sponsored by the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship庚子賠款獎學金. Incidentally, this scholarship program was established in 1907 under Theodore Roosevelt administration using the “excess” of the indemnity paid to U.S. under the Boxer Protocol or Treaty of 1901 between Eight-Nation Alliance and China (note U.S.’s share was about $0.5 billion dollars in today’s dollar or about twice of what U.S. had asked for; thus the "excess"). The reputed HsingHua University清華大學was started out of this fund and more than 1,000 students came to U.S. to study since 1909 under its sponsorship. Many of them became prominent leaders in their fields including philosopher Hu Shih胡適and Nobel Physics Laureate Chen-Ning Franklin Yang楊振寧 .

Qian went to Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in 1936 and received his Ph.D. in 1939 under the preeminent aerodynamics scientist Theodore von Karman, a Hungarian-American, who had called him as “an undisputed genius”. Qian was a member of the 6 person "suicide squad” led by another Karman’s graduate student Frank Malina that designed and conducted many rocket experiments. As the program matured, they became the founding members of now world renown JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center) with Frank Malina as its first director. As WWII intensified in Europe and the German rocket and missile capabilities advanced, one can imagine the importance of their work to U.S. government and the Ally. In fact Qian was sent to Germany after the war to interrogate key Nazi scientists including Wernher von Braun who designed the German V-2 rocket. Later, von Braun helped U.S. develop its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and led the development of NASA’s Saturn V booster rocket that put first men on the moon. Some have called Von Braun the Father of U.S. space program.

Qian’s stardom career in U.S. took a drastic turn in 1950 during the second Red Scare (the first one took place in 1917-1920 after the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917). He was accused of being a member of a subversive organization, arrested and put in jail for two weeks by Immigration Authority (he was in the process of applying for citizenship at the time) before his colleagues and friends got him out. His security clearance was revoked and he could no longer participate in those critical programs. The only “evidences” cited against him appeared to be that he had gone to one social gathering (at the invitation of Frank Malina) of some alleged communist sympathizers and that his name was mentioned in an American Communist Party document. The sensitive and secret documents and data he was alleged to have packed and brought to China in his planned visit of his family turned out to be public domain data like a logarithm table.

Despite efforts to clear his name by him, his colleagues and Caltech, Qian remained under partial house arrest for subsequent years. He tried his best to continue his unclassified research at home and at Caltech. While it was not totally clear the timeline of various events, Qian did declare his intent to return to China early on during the investigation and prosecution. The action was most likely due to that he was so upset with the accusation and treatment and that he saw his future in U.S. had been ruined. All along it appeared that he had all the intention to stay and work in U.S. Indeed there wasn’t any indication that Qian was ever active in politics or subscribed to any particular ideology.

Of course, U.S. government would not let Qian leave the country under the circumstances, knowing his ability, knowledge, and previous critical involvement of military applications of rocketry. It wasn’t till Sept 1955 when U.S. government released him and allowed him and his family to go to China as a part of post Korea War negotiation for the release and exchange of some American prisoners held by China. The rest is history. China has since developed ballistic missiles of all ranges over the years. It now launches commercial satellites regularly for the western countries including U.S. China has also just completed its first space walk in 2008 and is busy moving ahead for manned space missions. Qian was unquestionably the key figure in China’s quest of missile and space technology in last five decades.

Well, we rarely learn from history. Qian’s story was only one of many examples that took place under McCarthyism-like practices in many countries and societies; it incubates and looks for opportunities to germinate from time to time. As recent as 1998, U.S. House of Representatives had formed a committee to look into military/commercial concerns with China. The final Cox Report included some controversial statements that repeated the allegation of Qian being a Chinese spy without any proof. At about the same time, WenHo Lee 李文和, a Taiwan-born Chinese American scientist who worked at the Los Alamos National Lab, was falsely accused of being a spy for Chinese government. Eventually all the initial sensationalization and exaggeration proved to be just that. Federal government dropped finally dropped 58 out of the 59 charges and settled the case with Lee’s guilty plea to the sole felony charge of improper handling of restricted data.

I am not suggesting a country or an entity should not protect its own interest. Being the most developed country who owns so much advanced commercial and military technologies, U.S. must assume that there are countries and organizations, friends or foe, out there who would like to get their hands on those data. One must devise and implement safeguards to maximize the competitive advantage for business as well as for national security. But let us not forget that the real unique asset and advantage America has is its people including the talented and motivated immigrants.

Thankfully, people in U.S. are blessed with a pretty good judicial system and a strong journalistic tradition, protected under the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and laws like Freedom of Information Act. White terror and mass hysteria sometimes may override logic and reason temporarily for some periods. With persistent pursuits of facts and truth however, justice does usually prevail. Even a powerful and fearful figure like Senator Joe McCarthy was eventually brought down by public opinion with help from transparent proceedings offered by TV broadcast and critical examination of conscientious journalists like Ed Murrow of CBS. However we must be vigilant. We must make sure that immigrants are treated fairly and justly. Incidents like Qian's must not be allowed to happen again.

Talk to you soon!

What is in the Beef?

The latest and hottest political news in Taiwan is about the removal of much of the restrictions on importing American beef to the island. On October 22, Taiwan’s Department of Health (DOH) announced that Taiwan will amend its import restriction on U.S. beef and beef products, consistent with the guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka “Mad Cow Disease”), and allow more beef more products to enter Taiwan market starting Nov 10th. Further, there will be a transition period, as short as 6 months, during which U.S. exporters will export only beef and beef products derived from cattle less than 30 months in age. This is not a minor political issue. In spring 2008, South Korean’s new cabinet had to resign in less than 4 months of its installation due to a political crisis triggered by a similar policy change (that did get implemented on July 1^st, 2008).

BSE or “Mad Cow Disease” was first discovered in brains and spines of cattle in Great Britain back in 1986 with unknown origin and had been found in a few countries including U.S. It is a fatal neurodegenerative disease primarily in cattle. However, it is pretty certain that the disease can be transmitted to certain animals and people who had ingested products of infected cattle although the number of known cases is small. In the case of human, BSE is known as a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and there is no cure and death is almost certain, thus a series health concern by all.

Responding to the first BSE case reported in U.S. in Dec. 2003, most countries including Taiwan immediately banned the import of beef and beef products from U.S. The financial impact on American cattle and associated business was significant. Prior to it, the total export of U.S. beef and beef product was valued at about $3.8 billion in 2003. In 2004, after the ban, it dropped to $0.8 billion. With the improvement steps by U.S. cattle business and government regulations/monitors, many countries have relaxed the bans to varying degree. As a result, the export has climbed back close to the pre-BSE era at about $3.6 billion in 2008 according to the private USMEF (U.S. Meat Export Federation). In the case of Taiwan, it lifted the complete ban in Jan 2006 and has been allowing import of boneless muscle cuts from cattle 30 month of age or less. It continues to ban others till now including bone-in cuts and so called variety meat (processed or parts other than skeletal muscles) such as ground beef, intestines, brains, spines, etc.

Taiwan has been an important market to U.S. meat export business for a long time. In 2008, Taiwan was the fifth-largest value market for US beef export valued at $127.7 million, after Mexico ($1.4 billion), Canada($716 million), Japan($383 million), South Korea($294 million) according to USMEF. By the way, Taiwan only produces about 6,000 metric tons of beef annually and relies heavily on imports. It imported about 73 thousand metric tons of beef in 2008 out of which 22 thousand metric tons or 30% were from U.S., slightly behind Australia (~27 thousand metric tons) and ahead of New Zealand (~19 thousand metric tons).

It should not surprise anyone that this business and trade interest between U.S. and Taiwan had become a non-trivial political issue in Taiwan. At one end of the spectrum, fevered nationalism and the remnants of anti-imperialism resurfaced, fanned by some with other political agenda. Some scholars and health experts question the scientific and technical basis for policy change and the lack of transparency of the process. What is clear is that the communications have been so poor that top government officials could not give facts and stories clearly and consistently which naturally led to more speculations and suspicions.

After few days of scrambling to put out the fire, President Ma YingJeo responded in public that we can’t go back on the signed agreement as it would damage our credibility in international negotiations (true, but it does not address the question by many about signing the agreement in the first place). Further he suggested that people should not worry about their safety as there can be safeguards by private business and citizens including refusal to consume U.S. beef products as long as government does not violate the agreement. Wow! This is the first time I have ever seen a government openly absolved its own responsibility and pass it to private! That makes me wonder what promises U.S. government has given in exchange for this beef diplomacy?

Going back to the basics, one has to ask what is the fuss about eating beef and what is in the beef anyway. It turns out the answers can be complex given varying levels of industrialization of the beef production in different countries. Majority of beef consumed in U.S. and for export come from domestic feedlots enabled by cheap, federally subsidized corn. Michael Pollan had a lively discussion about it (and human consumption of food in general) in his 2006 best seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Roughly, 6 months after a calf was born and raised on a prairie, it spends 3 months in a pen (for weaning) and then 5 months in a centralized feedlot fed with unnatural diet of corn, fat, protein and drugs. The single dominant business objective is to maximize the amount of meat one can grow without making the cattle too sick to be sent to a slaughterhouse.

When and after being slaughtered, there are numerous opportunities for creating beef products to maximize the value and profit. Quality meat is usually not an issue. It is the utilization and handling of low quality meat and other parts of the beef that causes concerns. Indeed the updated guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) focus on so-called SRM (Specific Risky Materials) such as brains, skulls, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cords, vertebral columns and dorsal root ganglia from cattle 30 months of age and older, or tonsils and the distal ileum of the small intestine from cattle of all ages. For instance, they should not be used in feed since that is one way BSE gets spread to other cattle. While one may argue the guidelines should be more strict, I am ok with it as a consumer as far as policy goes as long as the guidelines are based on scientific knowledge and if there is a way to trace the suspected material.

What is more disconcerting is the ever popular ground beef and hamburger meat that most of us don’t know what is in it. On Oct 3^rd, 2009, New York Times reporter Michael Moss gave an in-depth examination of the safety of ground beef and hamburger meat. It turns out that with highly mechanized process and global trades, hamburger patties can be made from a variety of trimmings and usually low grades of meat sourced from different slaughterhouses in U.S. and abroad (thus hard to trace and safeguard). Fatal contamination of E Coli O157:H7 in public restaurants and ground beef have happened few times in last decade in U.S. though rare. I wonder what and how do Taiwan’s health organizations deal with such a potential risk. Note technically U.S. government regulations for ground beef and hamburger are different; the former has to be derived from meat only while the latter may include additions of fat, trimmings and derivative of scraps. Sounds like the Credit Default Swaps that triggered the current global financial crisis, doesn’t it?

I am disappointed at the way Taiwan government handles the U.S. beef import controversy. I am frustrated with the lack of attention to details and communication. I do enjoy eating beef, especially Chinese beef soup noodle and once in a while, a thick tender juicy steak. I am not paranoid nor do I plan to give them up for that extremely small risk. But I do want to be an educated consumer living in a place where people value science, are interested in pursuing the truth, and can discuss controversial issues objectively and logically. What about you?

Talk to you soon!

Piano Piano

Like many stereotypical Asian American parents, we bought a Yamaha U1 upright piano when kids were young and retained a piano instructor to teach them playing piano (no, they did not become pianists nor did they go to the Julliard School). The piano has been sitting quietly in our living room for many years, serving as a beautiful piece of furniture and memory since kids left the house. Recently, I decided to give it a try myself and enrolled at a Group Piano Intro class at the local community college, and here I went for my latest new venture. If you have seen the movie The Visitor (which was nominated for the best actor award in 2009 Oscar), you can probably understand my apprehension. In the first part of that movie, the main character, a music loving burned-out professor, was not getting anywhere with his effort of learning to play piano. Eventually his teacher gave up and told him bluntly the best thing he could do is to sell her his piano.

Piano is arguably the most versatile musical instrument. Most modern pianos have 88 keys with 52 white and 36 black keys that span a range of 7 and ¼ octaves from A0 to C7 (the letters refer to the familiar diatonic scale notation …ABCDEFGA…) where A4 is tuned to 440 Hz. Here is a drawing of the piano keyboard from wikipedia. In contrast, violin’s pitch ranges from G3, a little below the middle C (or C4), to C8 (4186.01 Hz), the highest pitch in piano. The pitch range of cello, another popular bowed string instrument, is from C2 (two octaves below the middle C) and A3. Human vocal cord is of course much more limiting; soprano can go as high as “high F” (or F6) while bass can get as low as A1 (55 Hz), 3 octave below the A4. No wonder piano has been a favorite tool by the composers to test and rehearse their music. In addition to being used in solos, it is also a popular instrument for accompaniment, chamber music, and ensembles.

Piano's 88 keys come in a pattern of repeating groups of 12 keys that consist of alternating 2 black and 3 white key and then 3 blacks and 4 white keys. These 12 keys are tuned to approximate the 12-tone equal temperament intonation that divides a scale of an octave into 12 equally spaced half steps (or semitones) such that ratio of the frequencies of successive tones is a constant. Since the frequencies of the notes that are one octave apart is exactly a factor of 2, mathematically and theoretically, this constant ratio can be found as the 12th root of 2. In practice, piano is tuned to reduce the inherent inharmonicity in the strings since the human auditory perception found harmonics (i.e., integer multiples of fundamental frequencies) more pleasant. As a result, octaves are normally stretched such that the high notes are higher, and the low notes lower, than they are in an equal-tempered scale as shown by the Railsback curve to the right (again from Wikipedia) from measurements of well-tuned pianos.

Piano is the short for its original Italian name clavicembalo or gravicembalo col piano e forte that literally means harpsichord with soft and loud whereby harpsichord is its popular predecessor in Renaissance and Baroque Music periods. It was first developed in late 17th and early 18th century and was believed to be created by the Italian harpsichord master maker Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco in Florence. However, unlike harpsichord that produces sound by plucking, piano generates sounds by hammering the strings, similar to clavichord.

It is intuitive that there are practically unlimited possibilities to compose and express different music given the range with any combination of keys, intervals, tempo that make up progressions of varying length, dynamics and so on. Even after the composer has written the music, there is still huge rooms for individual performers to interpret and express it the way they want. For example, here is a YouTube video of the famous Franz Liszt’s La Campanella (third of the six Grandes Etudes de Paganini - Etude No. 3 in G-sharp Minor). It is the recording of the preliminary recital by the blind Japanese young pianist Nobuyuki Tsuuji at the 13th Cliburn Competition earlier this year (by the way, he was a co-recipient of the gold medal award).



Below is another YouTube video of the same music, performed by Yundi Li who was the winner of the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in year 2000 (at age of 18, the youngest winner thus far). To my ear and with my imagination, Li's interpretation is more playful and joyful yet deliberate which is very different from Nobuyuki Tsuuji’s. The latter is full of excitement and anticipation and at times, hurried. But if you look at the total time, it was a mere 14 seconds longer for a piece of music that is almost 4 and half minutes long. It is amazing the minute differences in tempo, force, transition and so on can be felt and amplified so much in listeners’ mind through key strokes of performer’s ten flying fingers and two feet. It is indeed a powerful instrument of music!




Well, I have no idea how far I can go as I barely just got started in this venture. But for the last 6 weeks, I surely have had a lot of fun and I have begun to appreciate otherwise pretty dry music theory and what are behind the beautiful music. If nothing else, I hope I will be a more educated listener of music. Wish me luck and talk to you soon!