Skepticblog

I just came back from a 10-day trip to my home town of Kota Kinabalu, capital of the State of Sabah (formerly North Borneo) in East Malaysia. It was a wonderful vacation.

Troupe of Proboscis monkeys

The purpose of the trip was to attend my high-school class of 1969 40th reunion. In addition to meeting up with classmates who stayed and made their lives in Malaysia, I met up with classmates from Canada, Australia, Singapore and the U.S.  A few of us made our way (45 min. flight, 5 hr. drive and 45 min. up river by boat) to the interior of Borneo and spend a few nights in the Kinabatangan valley to see for ourselves what was left of the virgin primary forest – and communed with orangutans, horn bills, proboscis monkeys and even a pygmy Borneo elephant.
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Waiting ...

Earlier this week, on my way to lunch, I had to weave my way through throngs of students queuing up to try to get tickets to see the Dalai Lama who will be speaking at the university (University of California, Berkeley) in April. This is the 50th anniversary of his exile from Tibet — when the Chinese government annexed his country.  The Dalai Lama, his family and his “court” escaped and are now all living in exile in Dharamsala, India. With no country to run, his full time job is now the chief propagandist for the Tibetan government-in-exile, and by all accounts, he is really good at it. (continue reading…)

(Some makes and models of cars mentioned have been omitted to protect the guilty!)

I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist – it’s my grumpy rant about oil-change interval for our much beloved automobiles. I don’t know why, but I get terribly bugged by this every time I happen to buy a new car – which I did last month.  I just feel liked being “bullied” into not making the right decisions about our environment and my pocket book. (continue reading…)

I have been quite busy lately getting ready for a trip to Malaysia – Malaysian Borneo to be exact.  I will be attending my 40th high school reunion in the city of Kota Kinabalu, capital city of the East Malaysia State of Sabah.  For the Survivors fans, the city of KK was the staging city for the first season of Survivor in 2000.  Survivor Borneo was filmed on an island called Pula Tiga, about 3 miles east of the city.  It turned out that one of my former classmates was responsible for getting the show to be filmed there 9 years ago and so I am looking forward to meeting up with him as well as many of my other classmates I have not seen for 40 years.  

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All right, I guess I should get out more often!  I finally met a real life conspiracy nut in person and I have to admit that the experience disturbed me more than I thought it should.  I met someone who is sure that the water vapor tails left in the atmosphere by jet engines (contrails) are really chemical sprays (Chemtrails) commissioned by the U.S. government for some nefarious purpose.  Yes, I have heard of them in passing, along with the 911 “Truther” and the JFK conspiracy nuts but I never thought I’d actually talk to a live one! 

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One of the hazards of being a Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Areas is that I frequently get asked to give advice about Feng-Shui. Feng-Shui is perhaps one of the most virulent strain of pseudoscience from the East that has attached itself firmly to the New Age Movement and adopted by many noveau rich of the Silicon Valley and Napa Valley who seem to have an affection for all things associated with Ancient Eastern philosophy or mysticism. I have been at gatherings where the conversation revolves around business successes attributed to good Feng-Shui and bad business outcomes or a failed startup vineyard or dot.com venture was blamed on the principals’ willful ignorance of the “fundamentals” of Feng-Shui when designing their corporate headquarters. (continue reading…)

If you have been around Chinese for any length for time, you cannot help but notice that many of us are very particular about anything that has to do with numbers.  I don’t even know if it’s really “numerology” as is understood in the West but it really has to do with how a particular digit is phonetically sounded out.
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Rewind the tape 50 years – I awoke one morning with a bit of extra sleep on my eyes and complained to my mom about canker sore in my mouth. That afternoon when I came home from school, a tall glass of cooling barley water awaits me to offset the extra heat due to too much activity in my liver. In the folklore of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), our bodies can be too heaty, or too cool, or damp or dry. Our bodies can also, according to that tradition have a combination of these undesirable conditions such as dry heat or damp heat which must be treated accordingly.  By Western (and modern) standard of behavior, as an eight-year old kid with a ten-year old brother, it would not be considered the least bit unhealthy to engage in some sibling rivalry scuffles and quarrels. But whenever we bickered or had some spat in front of older relatives we could count on them to admonish my mother to brew us some chrysanthemum tea (and make it extra sweet!) Childish verbal or physical jousting between us brothers must be due to overly vinegary or acidic disposition and can be neutralized by sweet chrysanthemum tea. Arthritis is damp wind in the joints so the cure is to take herbs that will remove the wind and dry up the joints. For every condition, physical or mental where external manifestations can be observed, there are corresponding herbs, animal parts/by-products or even toxic minerals to help neutralize and restore harmony to the body. This is TCM in its most rudimentary form and is still practiced today. (continue reading…)

I am not a medical doctor and I don’t even play one on TV!  So how am I qualified to write about Chinese medicine?  Well because I grew up with it! Is that really good enough?  Yes, and every Chinese who grew up in a Chinese household in a Chinese community are inculcated with knowledge about Chinese medicine and how it works.  Like any other Chinese kid growing up, when I was sick my mother could quickly diagnose my illness and if she couldn’t, she could turn to her mother or aunts or other higher authority figures. In more severe cases, there’s always the guy selling herbs. (continue reading…)

If you have been around any science and engineering departments of any of the well-regarded universities and research institutions in the U.S., you will find that Chinese as an ethnic group are very well represented among the faculty and research staff. Yet, anyone with even the most superficial interaction with the Chinese community will come away with the observation that despite prominence in the science and engineering fields, theirs is still a community infatuated with superstition, and perhaps even delight in celebrating pseudoscience as part of their cultural identity. (continue reading…)