Rated Parental Guidance

<正>Foreigners living in China agree that Chinese students of all ages are filial:very respectful to their family and elders.My friend Linda Liu explained to me that filial piety remains alive in modern China.This behavior is learned at a very early age,as children learn to read."A book,called The Classic of Filial Piety,dates back to some 2,000 years ago,"said Linda."This book offers outstanding behavioral examples to children."     

The Art of Eating Well

The Chinese understand food. We all need to eat; people share food to become intimate with others, and food represents comfort and nourishes our bodies. Westerners sometimes forget the medicinal value of food but Chinese people understand this well. They gratify themselves by eating but many of my Chinese friends also choose medicinal meals, either through traditional doctors, or via recipes, to focus on maintaining a balanced body. At the same time, eating     

Obsession With English

Almost every day I am asked by someone in China to teach English. Professors ask me to come to their classes; friends ask me to tutor their children; deans ask me to join their foreign language departments.     

The Three Faces of Defeasibility in the Law

Abstract. In this paper we will analyse the issue of defeasibility in the law, taking into account research carried out in philosophy, artificial intelligence and legal theory. We will adopt a very general idea of legal defeasibility, in which we will include all different ways in which certain legal conclusions may need to be abandoned, though no mistake was made in deriving them. We will argue that defeasibility in the law involves three different aspects, which we will call inference‐based defeasibility, process‐based defeasibility, and theory‐based defeasibility. Only the integration of these three perspectives allows us to provide a satisfactory account of the role of defeasibility in legal reasoning.     

Legal Validity as Doxastic Obligation: From Definition to Normativity

The paper argues for viewing legal validityas a doxastic obligation, i.e. as the obligation toaccept a rule in legal reasoning. This notion of legalvalidity is shown to be both sufficient for thelaywers' needs and neutral in regard to varioustheories of the grounds of validity, i.e. theoriesintended to identify what rules are legally valid, byproposing different grounds for attributing validity.All of these theories, rather then being alternativedefinitions of validity, presuppose the notion hereprovided.This notion is purely normative, but it allows for theconstruction of theories of the grounds of validitywhich give due importance to social expectations andinstitutions. As an example of how this may happen,one such theory is also provided. This theory, whichis presented through a detailed example of a judicialdebate, is based upon the recognition of the(instrumental) value of co-ordination, as thenecessary way to achieve the most valuable purposes ofthe law.     

The ABCs of Communication

People in every culture tend to regard the way they do things as"normal."This includes the communicative practices and norms that people learn from interacting inside their culture.But in regard to ways of speaking,what may seem natural to one person may be odd or misunderstood by someone outside that culture.What seems natural to the speaker is actually ritualized behavior,generated and governed by cultural norms.     

Rules of the Tongue

I believe Chinese teachers here have the best intentions in the world. Schools must measure and assess how students learn, yet evaluating language learning is a particularly slippery slope.     

Thujone—Cause of absinthism?

Habitual abuse of the wormwood spirit absinthe was described in the 19th and 20th centuries as a cause for the mental disorder "absinthism" including the symptoms hallucinations, sleeplessness and convulsions. A controversial discussion is going on if thujone, a characteristic component of the essential oil of the wormwood plant Artemisia absinthium L., is responsible for absinthism, or if it was merely caused by chronic alcohol intoxication or by other reasons such as food adulterations. To ascertain if thujone may have caused absinthism, absinthes were produced according to historic recipes of the 19th century. Commercial wormwood herbs of two different manufacturers, as well as self-cultivated ones, were used in a concentration of 6 kg/100 l spirit. In addition, an authentic vintage Pernod absinthe from Tarragona (1930), and two absinthes from traditional small distilleries of the Swiss Val-de-Travers were evaluated. A GC-MS procedure was applied for the analysis of alpha- and beta-thujone with cyclodecanone as internal standard. The method was shown to be sensitive with a LOD of 0.08 mg/l. The precision was between 1.6 and 2.3%, linearity was obtained from 0.1 to 40 mg/l (r = 1.000). After the recent annulment of the absinthe prohibition all analysed products showed a thujone concentration below the maximum limit of 35 mg/l, including the absinthes produced according to historic recipes, which did not contain any detectable or only relatively low concentrations of thujone (mean: 1.3 +/- 1.6 mg/l, range: 0-4.3 mg/l). Interestingly, the vintage absinthe also showed a relatively low thujone concentration of 1.8 mg/l. The Val-de-Travers absinthes contained 9.4 and 1.7 mg/l of thujone. In conclusion, thujone concentrations as high as 260 mg/l, reported in the 19th century, cannot be confirmed by our study. With regard to their thujone concentrations, the hallucinogenic potential of vintage absinthes can be assessed being rather low because the historic products also comply with today's maximum limits derived to exclude such effects. It may be deduced that thujone plays none, or only a minor role in the clinical picture of absinthism.     

Chinese Communication Styles

正China has become an economic superpower,but that success is not contingent on Chinese businessmen,government officials,and other elites on having assimilated into a Western style of communication.There are still vast differences in the ways in which Chinese interact with Western people,and with the world at large.Significantly,the primary function of Chinese communication strategy     

Tips for Foreign English Teachers

In China,English language teaching effectiveness appears as a complex thing to assess,primarily because various variables exist in evaluating a teacher,foreign or otherwise.One obvious consideration is the fact that classrooms are large,with 50-60