Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?
This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.
The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.
Six Chinese nationals wounded in Lao ambush
Posted byVoltaire's guess is a good one. Note that few Chinese get shot and few Lao shoot at them. I'm not advocating gunfire, but most poor are used to being poor, and I don't think this is good - but individuals losing their cool and blasting away is unlikely to solve anything.
A trip to Yunnan's Jurassic Park
Posted byI think museum displays of dinosaurs almost everywhere are partly built of real petrified bones and partly by artificial parts made according to what is known about the type of dinosaur in the display from remains found elsewhere. However, I know nothing of the specific displays under discussion.
Kunming buses installing wi-fi services
Posted byWi-fi addiction is weird.
Jinghong dam release aimed at easing SE Asian drought
Posted byZhudan's implied point. Probably has to do with the high amount of precipitation this winter in Yunnan?
Getting Away: Ten days of Bengali bedlam
Posted byGood article! I visited the place (Dhaka and a couple villages in the beautiful green poverty-stricken countryside), in 1985, and now it sounds even crazier than what I saw at the time - and I was coming from Calcutta by land, so I was already a bit acclimatized to South Asia. Calcutta is amazing and also crazy, but looking back on my experience there from Dhaka,m it seemed like a beacon of hope, sanity and development, compared to the sadness and desperation of Bangla Desh.
Too many people, incredibly fertile farmland with no possibility of developing any more because it's all already under excellent labor-intensive cultivation, corrupt ruling class, and further problems - hopefully, we both simply missed seeing whatever causes for optimism may exist somewhere. Been a lot of places, but Bangla Desh is the only place that made me, literally, cry. I read a lot about the country while I was there (nearly 3 months), and the more I read the more depressed I got. Supposedly the economy is better now than it was then...??