物華天寶 Imperial Treasures

NEWS:

Taiwan and Austria team up for the sake of art!

The Ch'ien-lung Emperor's treasures and many more are now on display in Vienna! Go see!

February 26 till May 13, 2008

This display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna of a selected 116 sets of works from the National Palace Museum includes 88 sets or works of antiquities, 23 works of painting and calligraphy, and five rare books--making for a total of 179 objects altogether.

These masterpieces can be said to represent the essence of the long history of Chinese culture as well as its unparalleled refinement, variety, and dynamism. Chinese culture over the course of its millennia of history has continuously absorbed elements from other peoples, bringing discovery and inspiration that has given rise to many new cultural dimensions.

link

the disturbing news

Like it or not, you're not in charge: you laugh, you frown too, you follow rules and soon again you don't, you chill out, you feel shocked, you feel blessed, you get vexed, you know you're alive...

Life is no fairy tale dressing up going on stage faking the love following a set script reacting to cues moaning over non-existent troubles, playing death, then getting up again ready for the next scene. Heavy makeup pretentious grins and piling up loads and loads more meaningless lines. what's the point.

And they surely wished it had been all just a performance, or a nightmare. The blood was real. The killing was real. Victims and gunman identified. Evil was there. No exit. No returning. How was one ever to come to terms with disasters like this? Forget about it. What do you have to do with all this??

Surely it wasn't unavoidable? What follows shouldn't be anti-this, anti-that, let's hide away, something or someone is to blame, not me. This is nothing to do with selfishness. Gunman was a loner, gunman was a loner. How scary? Naturally people shun from complexity and tangles. It's simple to make a difference but some just choose to turn away. Or close their eyes.

They say the killer killed himself too. How many of us in the auditorium are about as heartless as him, and living. Think. And try. Be good, be fair.

'pillow angel'

I read that,

Today's Guardian relates how doctors in Seattle devised a radical course of surgery and hormone treatments at the request of Ashley's parents to keep the disabled girl small, making her easier to care for and carry. This included a hysterectomy, "excision of the early buds of her breasts, and medication with high doses of oestrogen to limit her growth by prematurely fusing the growth plates of her bones".

My first reaction to this was that 'this is unnatural, therefore it cannot be right, but I need to know more before I judge them.'

Then I read more feedback in Guardian's 'have your say'. I provide the link below.

news blog

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Ethical issues are hard to tackle. No, no, that's not my conclusion. I was thinking, if I were the girl, would I want this. I felt 'this can't be right' because I thought the girl's gender would later be an issue, but then again, gender is something social, something from outside. Since the pillow angel has a 3-month-old baby's brain, she is free from this confinement of male/female. It's her life, she gets to decide, yes, but who has a life at the age of 3 months anyway?

Some taunted the selfishness of the parents, but I think they are only human too. Parents love their children, but they get fatigued too. Being realistic is good, and this is not the case of 'be cruel to be kind'--you can only be cruel to be cruel, kindness does not come out of it. Oops, digression. Perhaps it is the best for the girl's physical maturity to stay close to her 3-month-old brain. This involves a lot of compromises and controversies, certainly, but there is no perfect decision.