Jason Hong's Confabulations

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~simonscholar/ The goal of the China-Carnegie Mellon University program is to promote and influence next-generation Chinese academic leaders in Computer Science. ... The Simon-Scholar program is designed to bring exceptional young professors (lecturers, assistant professors, and assoicate professors) at leading Computer Science Departments in China to visit Carnegie Mellon for 6 to 12 months. Carnegie Mellon will match each scholar with a host professor, and together they will conduct research of mutual interest. This program is supported by The Chinese Ministry of Education, The China Scholarship Council, and Carnegie Mellon University.

There's a (somewhat) interesting article in today's New York Times on adopted Chinese children. I have to say that my experiences with adopted Chinese children and their parents here in Pittsburgh have been highly positive. The children are all wonderful, and their parents go to extraordinary lengths and sacrifices for their children. Shelley and I (along with others) have been helping to teach the children basic Chinese and a little about Chinese culture, and everyone is so excited to keep learning. I also can't help but think that this will help the United States' relation with China in the long term. When there is greater awareness here in the United States (that China is more than Chinese food, the Great Wall, and martial arts), as the young girls go back to visit China, as we strengthen our connections between our two countries, we have a better and more grounded understanding of each other rather than the stereotypes and caricatures often presented in the media. S

I was expecting things like the Great Wall and the Three Gorges Dam, but it's really about modern buildings. Check out the Central Chinese Television CCTV building, I can't believe it doesn't fall over. I'd hate to work on the top floor of that building! Link

A person in a class I taught in China this summer tells me that there are some new UI books recently translated into Chinese. BOOK: About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design CHINESE VERSION: http://www.china-pub.com/computers/common/info.asp?id=24368 Another very good book: BOOK: Emotional Design CHINESE VERSION: http://www.china-pub.com/computers/common/info.asp?id=24367

The United States still has a large lead over China, but if the current sad state of affairs with respect to education and research continues here in the US, it's only a matter of time before China catches up. When Andrew Chi-chih Yao, a Princeton professor who is recognized as one of the United States' top computer scientists, was approached by Qinghua University in Beijing last year to lead an advanced computer studies program, he did not hesitate. [JIH - Andrew Chi-chih Yao won the Turing Award in 2000] ... China has already pulled off one of the most remarkable expansions of education in modern times, increasing the number of undergraduates and people who hold doctoral degrees fivefold in 10 years. ... In only a generation, China has sharply increased the proportion of its college-age population in higher education, to roughly 20 percent now from 1.4 percent in 1978. In engineering alone, China is producing 442,000 new undergraduates a year, along with 48,000 graduates with