Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Liu Xiaobo And The Nobel Peace Prize: Readings And Reactions

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When we heard of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize win last week, we quickly reached out to a variety of China Beatniks and asked for either their reactions to the news or links to any writings they had done on Liu in the past. Below are some of the responses we received.

Readings On Liu Xiaobo And The Nobel Peace Prize, Part 2

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Many more commentaries about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize have been published since we collected an initial round of readings on Friday. Here’s the latest:

First Reactions: Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Here in California, we woke up early this morning to the news that Liu Xiaobo had indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. There’s been an outpouring of coverage in the hours since Liu’s win was announced, which will surely continue in the days to come; at the moment, “Liu Xiaobo” and “Nobel Peace Prize” are also in Twitter’s top-ten trending topics worldwide. We’ve been combing through news stories and tweets and put together this quick list of readings:

China’S Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis, Wang Feng

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Observers of China’s rise, when assessing the implications for global peace and prosperity, have largely focused their attention on the country’s economy, on its energy and resource needs, on the environmental consequences of its rapid expansion, and on the nation’s military buildup and strategic ambitions. Yet, underlying all these dazzling changes and monumental concerns is a driving force that has been seriously underappreciated: China’s changing demography.

New Readings On Mega-Events And Matteo Ricci

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Two of the scholarly publications on our radar have new China-related content online:

California Dreamin’ At China’S World’S Fair, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Shanghai can be a surreal place to visit in ordinary times. This is due to the juxtaposition of buildings, modes of transportation, and lifestyles that seem to belong to not just different decades but different centuries. And this aspect of the city was heightened for me last summer by the presence of the 2010 World Expo.

Coming Distractions: Chinese Whiskers, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Pallavi Aiyar’s 2008 memoir, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, details the six years she spent living in Beijing, first teaching English and then becoming a reporter for The Hindu. Now stationed in Brussels with the Business Standard, Aiyar’s articles tend to focus on topics such as Belgium’s cultural conflicts and theuneven parallels drawn between India and China. For this reason, I was quite surprised to learn that Aiyar’s second book, to be released by Harper Collins India in early 2011, is a story of Beijing narrated by two cats: Tofu and Soyabean, the protagonists of Chinese Whiskers, share …

Gao Xingjian, Wolfgang Kubin, And The Nobel Prize Debate Ten Years On, Sebastian Veg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese literature and its significance or insignificance is a continued subject of heated debate in China. From May Fourth, when anti-traditionalist thinkers called on literature to assume a pioneering role in transforming subjects into citizens, to its use as propaganda during World War Two and on both sides of the Strait after 1949, it was seen as a crucial vector of political ideas. During the “Enlightenment” of the 1980s, literature was again called upon to play a central – though politically very different – role in helping society come to terms with the officially still taboo traumas of the Cultural …

Shanghai Mourns Victims Of High-Rise Fire

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Thousands of Shanghai residents gathered on Sunday to mourn the victims of last week’s fire at Jiaozhou Road. Adam Minter has a thoughtful post on the mourning procession (as well as links for further reading) at Shanghai Scrap; Marta Cooper’s blog . . . in Shanghai has photos from the assembly. At the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report, watch a short video about Sunday’s gathering. On Twitter, users have been marking their thoughts on the fire and its aftermath with the hashtag #jiaozhoulu.

Bill And Warren’S Excellent (Chinese) Adventure, Caroline Reeves

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are throwing a charity banquet in Beijing. On September 29th, the two American tycoons will host a dinner for China’s wealthiest magnates to convince them to give their monies away to charity. This event has caused a stir in the Chinese world. Everyone from movie stars to industry moguls is involved. Doonesbury is talking about it. Some billionaires have publicly declined to dine with the dynamic duo, wondering aloud if the event was planned to publicly part them from their new fortunes. Their response has called into question China’s “charitable impulse” and given rise to …

Anhui’S Barefoot Aids Doctors, Annie Ye Ren

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the past four years, I have periodically worked with a Chinese grassroots HIV/AIDS non-governmental organization (NGO) that serves children in Fuyang Prefecture, Anhui Province. The Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association (AOS)gives aid directly to local communities, addressing local needs that are often overlooked or underfunded by large-scale government projects.

Measuring Economic Impacts Of Drought: A Review And Discussion, Ya Ding, Michael J. Hayes, Melissa Widhalm

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A comprehensive assessment of drought economic impacts provides critical information to rational decisions supporting drought mitigation policies and programs. The objective of this paper is to increase the understanding of the full scope of drought economic impacts and the associated quantitative assessment methodologies. To accomplish this, the paper reviews the literature of drought economic impact studies in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, summarizes the methods and data employed, compares the various results, and investigates the problems and limitations of previous studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges and directions of future improvement on drought economic impact assessment.

Dr. Connie's 6 Keys To Becoming A Successful Learner, Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Presentations and White Papers

I have learned a great deal about students by teaching and advising learners at the University of Nebraska. The fact that I was working on my Ph.D. on a part-time basis while being employed full-time broadened my knowledge about how to be a successful learner. My professional and personal experiences in the world of higher education have enabled me develop some powerful insights on what it takes to be a successful learner. I would like to share my insights with as many people as possible, so here are Dr. Connie’s 6 Keys to Becoming a Successful Learner:

An Entrepreneurial Approach To Career Development, Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Presentations and White Papers

This article explains how people can use an entrepreneurial approach to career development in and effort to advance their careers and employment opportunities.

Sustainability Through Profitability: The Triple Bottom Line, Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Presentations and White Papers

Today’s highly competitive, globalized world requires organizations and businesses to think differently about how they are going to stay in business. Businesses can no longer afford to focus on profits as their sole purpose for existence. Organizations must instead think about the “Triple Bottom Line” and its implications for their ability to grow their brand, customer loyalty and profits.

Fair Practices In Hiring, Case Analyses, Susan Poser

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Case analyses of fair practices in hiring in academia.

The Supreme Court's Anti-Retaliation Principle, Richard E. Moberly

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In five cases issued during the last five years, the Supreme Court interpreted statutory anti-retaliation provisions broadly to protect employees who report illegal employer conduct. These decisions conflict with the typical understanding of this Court as pro-employer and judicially conservative. In a sixth retaliation decision during this time, however, the Court interpreted constitutional anti-retaliation protection narrowly, which fits with the Court’s pro-employer image but diverges from the anti-retaliation stance it appeared to take in the other five retaliation cases. This Article explains these seemingly anomalous results by examining the last fifty years of the Supreme Court’s retaliation jurisprudence. In doing …

In Search Of A Theory Of Deference: The Eighth Amendment, Democratic Pedigree, And Constitutional Decision Making, Eric Berger

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s recent Eighth Amendment death penalty case law is in disarray, and the confusion is symptomatic of a larger problem in constitutional doctrine. In Baze v. Rees and Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court approached the challenged state policies with vastly different levels of deference. Though the Court purported to apply longstanding Eighth Amendment tests in both cases, Baze was highly deferential to state policy, and Kennedy was not deferential at all. Remarkably, neither the Court nor legal scholars have acknowledged, let alone justified, these contrasting approaches.

This Article proposes a theory of deference to address this discrepancy. Courts …

Digital Statutory Supplements For Legal Education: A Cheaper, Better Way, C. Steven Bradford

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Students should not have to pay so much for statutory supplements. Commercial casebook publishers add little value to the freely available, noncopyrighted material in statutory supplements, and commercial publishers have no real comparative advantage in producing them. With little effort, law professors could produce many statutory supplements required for their courses for free, just as they produce course syllabi and other handouts. And they could provide those materials in a more convenient digital form, not in the bulky print format offered by the commercial casebook publishers. With the example given in this paper of successful creation and distribution of a …

The Invisible Woman: Availability And Culpability In Reproductive Health Jurisprudence, Beth Burkstrand-Reid

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Women's health is widely assumed to be a significant consideration in reproductive rights cases. Court decisions relating to contraception, abortion, and childbirth demonstrate that while this assumption may have historical validity, consideration of women's health is often truncated in recent reproductive rights jurisprudence. This occurs, in part, through the application of one or both of two recurring tools. First, judges regularly--and often inaccurately--cite the theoretical availability of alternative reproductive health services as proof that women's health will not suffer even if a law curtailing reproductive rights is upheld. I label this the "availability tool." Second, when alternatives are not available, …

Did The Arbitrator "Sneeze"?--Do Federal Courts Have Jurisdiction Over "Interlocutory" Awards In Class Action Arbitrations?, Kristen M. Blankley

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Judge Posner once stated that the federal courts do not have the ability to conduct judicial review every time the arbitrator "sneezes."' Judge Posner further opined, however, that although the courts do not have jurisdiction to review every ruling made by an arbitrator, he could not articulate any more specific rule as to when the federal courts do have jurisdiction. Of course, this concept has caused some great difficulties for parties who would like to have the ability to have additional review, particularly as class action arbitration procedures have explicitly contemplated judicial review at times other than after the final …

The "Clearest Command" Of The Establishment Clause: Denominational Preferences, Religious Liberty, And Public Scholarships That Classify Religions, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to analyze the Supreme Court's doctrine prohibiting denominational preferences with a view toward mapping out the boundaries of the doctrine in light of its animating principle of free religious competition. I will then attempt to apply the "clearest command of the Establishment Clause" to the facts of a recent free exercise decision of the Court, Locke v. Davey. Although the Court in Davey rejected a free exercise challenge to a state scholarship program that denied funding to students pursuing college degrees in "devotional theology," I will suggest that this exclusion creates a denominational …

Biofuels Incentives: A Summary Of Federal Programs, Brent D. Yacobucci

Congressional Research Service Reports

With recent high energy prices, the passage of major energy legislation in 2005 (P.L. 109-58) and 2007 (P.L. 110-140), and the passage of a new farm bill in 2008 (P.L. 110-246), there is ongoing congressional interest in promoting alternatives to petroleum fuels. Biofuels—transportation fuels produced from plants and other organic materials—are of particular interest.

Ethanol and biodiesel, the two most widely used biofuels, receive significant government support under federal law in the form of mandated fuel use, tax incentives, loan and grant programs, and certain regulatory requirements. The 22 programs and provisions listed in this report have been established over …

Agricultural Conservation: A Guide To Programs, Megan Stubbs

Congressional Research Service Reports

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently administer over 20 programs and subprograms that are directly or indirectly available to assist producers and landowners who wish to practice conservation on agricultural lands. The number, scope, and overall funding of these programs has grown in recent years. This growth can cause some confusion over which problems and conditions each program addresses, and specific program characteristics and performance.

This tabular presentation provides basic information introducing each of the programs. In each case, a brief program description is followed by …

Water Quality Issues In The 111th Congress: Oversight And Implementation, Claudia Copeland

Congressional Research Service Reports

Although much progress has been made in achieving the ambitious goals that Congress established more than 35 years ago in the Clean Water Act (CWA) to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters, long-standing problems persist, and new problems have emerged. Water quality problems are diverse, ranging from pollution runoff from farms and ranches, city streets, and other diffuse or “nonpoint” sources, to toxic substances discharged from factories and sewage treatment plants.

There is little agreement among stakeholders about what solutions are needed and whether new legislation is required to address the nation’s remaining …

Previewing Dairy Policy Options For The Next Farm Bill, Dennis A. Shields

Congressional Research Service Reports

Financial stress in the dairy industry in 2009, brought on largely by sharply lower milk prices, activated standing federal programs to support dairy farmers. In calendar year 2009, the federal government spent more than $1 billion to support the industry through the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) Program, the Dairy Product Price Support Program (DPPSP), and the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP). Following appeals from dairy farmers for more financial assistance, Congress granted another $350 million in October 2009 in the form of supplemental payments to dairy farmers and government purchases of dairy products.

While farm milk prices have increased …

Fy2010 Supplemental Appropriations For Agriculture, Jim Monke

Congressional Research Service Reports

Two separate bills are advancing in the 111th Congress that could provide nearly $4 billion of supplemental funds for agricultural programs in FY2010. The agricultural provisions in these bills have a relatively small funding impact compared with the nonagricultural provisions in the bills.

H.R. 4213 (commonly known as the “tax extenders” bill) would provide up to $3.6 billion for agriculture-related programs. The House and Senate are trading amendments to reconcile differences between each chamber’s version of the bill. The most recent House-passed version from May 28, 2010, includes $1.48 billion for agricultural disaster assistance, $1.15 billion for a settlement of …

Forestry In The Next Farm Bill, Ross W. Gorte

Congressional Research Service Reports

Forest management generally, as well as forest research and forestry assistance, have long been within the jurisdictions of the Agriculture Committees. Although most forestry programs are permanently authorized, forestry has usually been addressed in the periodic farm bills to reauthorize many agriculture programs. The 2008 farm bill (the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, P.L. 110-246) contained a separate forestry title, with provisions establishing national priorities for forestry assistance; requiring statewide forest assessments and strategies; providing competitive funding for certain programs; creating new programs for open space conservation and for emergency reforestation; reauthorizing four existing programs; and prohibiting imports …

Biomass Crop Assistance Program (Bcap): Status And Issues, Megan Stubbs

Congressional Research Service Reports

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-246, 2008 farm bill) created the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). The two main purposes of BCAP are (1) to support the establishment and production of eligible crops for conversion to bioenergy in selected areas, and (2) to assist agricultural and forest land owners and operators with collection, harvest, storage, and transportation of eligible material for use in a biomass conversion facility. BCAP is intended to assist with the bioenergy industry’s hurdle of continuous biomass availability.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Farm Service Agency (FSA) implemented one portion of BCAP—the …

Energy And Water Development: Fy2011 Appropriations, Carl E. Behrens

Congressional Research Service Reports

The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill provides funding for civil works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Energy (DOE), and a number of independent agencies.

Funding for FY2010 Energy and Water Development programs is contained in H.R. 3183, which the House passed July 17, 2009. The Senate passed its version of H.R. 3183 July 29. The Conference Committee issued its report (H.Rept. 111-278) September 30, and the House passed the conference bill October 1, and the Senate October 15. The President signed the bill October 28 …