Chinese Curse Research Articles

Notes from the (New) Editor

By the standards of the ancient Chinese curse (“May you live in interesting times”), my transition into the position of Editor of the APSR was cursed. Only a few days into these new duties, I looked up one morning from the stack of manuscripts on my desk, glanced out of the window at the beautiful blue sky, and beheld smoke billowing from the Pentagon.

Changing times: key issues for securities regulation and compliance

In the midst of one of the most challenging periods in decades, the securities industry is relearning the meaning of the ancient Chinese curse – “may you live in interesting times”. The end of the 90’s bull market, September 11th and corporate wrongdoing have given rise to new rules and far‐reaching new statutes. At the same time, technological change and global consolidation of markets and regulations also continue to drive change, as they did throughout the 1990s. The authors highlight some of the crucial regulatory and legislative developments that will have significant consequences for the securities industry. Legislative proposals in response to the recent corporate scandals, analyst independence, anti‐money laundering rules, and the effectiveness of the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act are among the issues examined.

The Cultural and Commercial Representation of Scotland in Europe

I RESERVED SUBJECTS: THE CRUMBLING WALL? 'Interesting times', as in the old Chinese curse, confront the Labour party in Scotland. In late 2000 it looked as if it would consolidate its control of Scottish politics at the forthcoming Westminster elections, yet its reversal of fortune at the Falkirk by-election on 21 December makes their long-term implications for Scotland more difficult to call. The next Scottish Parliament elections are due, ineluctably, in May 2003, when there's likely to be a severe case of mid-term blues. So there is a good chance that the present LabourLiberal Executive (or 'Government' since 9 January) will try to strengthen its position by stressing the 'process' aspect of devolution, in order to avoid losing power to the SNP, in coalition with the Liberals, Greens or Scottish Socialists. Should the trend of the Falkirk by-election and subsequent local contests continue, however, even this might not work: the SNP could be the largest single party in the parliament. If the oil price rises (though this isn't easy to predict: it could be lowered by a severe US recession), it will have an important weapon to hand. Even sections of a Lib-Lab Government may invoke greater autonomy against any attempt to reduce Scotland's financial entitlement under the Barnett formula, and also to force greater concessions on other subjects. One central area of these will almost inevitably involve reassessing Scotland's links with British foreign representation, a 'reserved subject' in which the UK view is supposed to take cognisance of Scottish interests, but in practice has only done so in specific areas. The moralistic objections of the Scots elite to Nato and its 'weapons of mass destruction' have already been

The New Retirement Agenda

The ancient Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times' seems to be being applied to social gerontology. All Western economies have been experiencing several inter-related trends: falling labour force participation rates among males in their late 50s and early 60s, raising the question of whether 'welfare to work' compulsion will soon be applied to them; fears over population ageing after the second decade of the 21st century, with worsening gerontic dependency ratios; the problem of how to 'reform' state pensions, to achieve the seemingly-impossible task of both reducing costs and providing adequate cover for the growing number of citizens who will find themselves in die low-paid, casualised periphery of the labour market; and the likelihood of increased disability and chronic illness levels among the larger numbers of 'oldest old'. Yet social gerontologists have risen to the challenge posed by these trends. Never has the literature on old age and ageing been so interesting, and these three books represent thoughtful and intelligent responses to questions that often invite ill-considered, apocalyptic answers. John Vincent brings to the study of ageing a delightfully broad and eclectic approach, encompassing sociology, gerontology, anthropology and demography. His book is written with exceptional clarity, and will find itself gratefully welcomed by both undergraduates and academic researchers (many of whom will envy his stylistic elegance). His aim is to trace the mechanisms by which inequalities of age operate in modern societies and subject old people to social devaluation. Age discriminations are difficult to separate out from those age classifications we all deploy in order to make sense of the world yet age operates as a powerful (and often unacknowledged) component of structured inequality. Again, no simple theory can tease apart the biological processes of ageing from the social and con textual. What we do know is that old people experience marked income reductions in old age (Vincent demonstrates this by showing income variations across the life course), exacerbated by gender, class and ethnicity. However, this status devaluation is not necessarily a product of modernisation: Vincent offers some interesting anthropological examples (from his own researches) to show how complex age stratifications have been in non-industrial societies. Subsequent chapters explore the newer 'life course approach' in social gerontology (which is not without its problems), postmodern theories of ageing, the elusive goal of an 'age-irrelevant' society, representations of old age in language and

The New Retirement Agenda

John A. Vincent, Inequality and Old Age, London: UCL Press, 1995, £13.95, paper, vi+218 pp.Richard Disney, Emily Grundy and Paul Johnson (eds.), The Dynamics of Retirement: Analyses of the Retirement Surveys, London: The Stationery Office, 1997, £36.00, paper, xvii+279 pp.Alan Walker and Tony Maltby, Ageing Europe, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997, £14.99, paper, x+149 pp.The ancient Chinese curse - ‘may you live in interesting times’ - seems to be being applied to social gerontology. All Western economies have been experiencing several inter-related trends: falling labour force participation rates among males in their late 50s and early 60s, raising the question of whether ‘welfare to work’ compulsion will soon be applied to them; fears over population ageing after the second decade of the 21st century, with worsening gerontic dependency ratios; the problem of how to ‘reform’ state pensions, to achieve the seemingly-impossible task of both reducing costs and providing adequate cover for the growing number of citizens who will find themselves in the low-paid, casualised periphery of the labour market; and the likelihood of increased disability and chronic illness levels among the larger numbers of ‘oldest old’. Yet social gerontologists have risen to the challenge posed by these trends. Never has the literature on old age and ageing been so interesting, and these three books represent thoughtful and intelligent responses to questions that often invite ill-considered, apocalyptic answers.

The curse of exciting times: Current challenges within the field of clinical behavior analysis.

There is an old Chinese curse that says you live in exciting and we as clinical psychologists are certainly living in exciting times these days. Most of us are aware of the increasing pressure community-based clinical psychologists are experiencing, although we are not necessarily sensitive to the impact this pressure is having on those practitioners or on our field. In large part, many of the changes and challenges we are facing are byproducts of the increasing financial limitations and time restrictions being place on community-based clinical psychologists and it has become apparent that there are a number of changes ahead that will greatly impact the field as we know it. Clinical behavior analysis has much to contribute to the field. On a fundamental level, we have the strength of an empirically grounded theory and a lengthy history of research demonstrating effective clinical work. Additionally, our historical roots in pragmatism allow for the adaptation and integration of techniques from other branches of clinical psychology, not traditionally seen as behavioral. We will need to be aware of the current context, however, if we are to effectively participate in the transition clinical psychology is undergoing. In addition, there are number of obstacles which make it difficult for CBA to be a part of this process; some of the variables controlling these trends are in our hands. First there is our isolation from other branches of psychology. We need to spend more time talking to clinical psychologists from alternative theoretical orientations. This is true for both academic psychologists and clinical behavior analysts. I work in a department of anesthesiology, a somewhat unusual setting for a clinical psychologists, and my various roles in the medical school are such that I have a foot in the clinical camp and a foot in the ivory towers of academia. In trying to balance these contingencies, it has become apparent to me that there is a schism between what academic clinicians are doing and what community-based clinicians are doing. If that schism grows, we may find that community-based clinical psychologists will pay less and less attention to the research we produce. There is already a general attitude ex- pressed by many of the clinical psychologists I encounter that much of what we do as researchers is not relevant to what they do as clinicians. It is vital that we attend to this issue. On a more practical level, we as clinical behavior analysts need to participate in dialogues with other clinicians if we want to play a role in the changes psychology is already undergoing. As CBA is largely performed by academic psychologists at this point, we don't often consider our role in the economic marketplace. Since the marketplace is largely oriented toward cognitive-behavioral therapy, it is wise for us to plan specifically how CBA will fit into the future marketplace. This has implications for attracting future behavior analysts into the field. Although applied behavior analysis has been highly successful in our work with the developmentally disabled and in closed communities/hospital settings, many have been reluctant to move into settings in which our influence over the functional contingencies is more limited and relies heavily on verbal and rule-governed behavior. Despite pioneering early work in the outpatient arena by Kanfer and Saslow (1965, 1966), Ferster (1973), Krasner (1978, 1988), and Rachlin (1988), the role of functional analysis in the outpatient treatment session and a more molar view of a client's life were largely unexplored. The more traditional treatment areas for behavior analysts do not represent the typical setting in which most clinical psychologists practice and when these behavioral treatments appear, they are similar to cognitive treatments (e. …

Interesting Times…

The Chinese curse – ‘May you live in interesting times’ – has unquestionably fallen upon those involved in landscape studies, as many papers previously published in this journal attest. Derks' contribution adds an attractive case study, drawn from the Roman world rather than from the more frequently visited prehistoric periods, to this ferment. Derks reviews recent interpretive arguments, before turning to the landscapes of northern Gaul: landscapes in the plural, for in his study area Derks teases out the existence of two zones which develop in distinctly different ways. His major achievement is to divert explanations for this development from the more usual channels of thinking, such as pondering economic and ecological variables, or categorizing areas as ‘Romanized’ or ‘non-Romanized’. His addition of social values and cosmological principles as ‘filters’ helping to determine the trajectories followed by these two zones is bold and, whether or not one agrees with the details of his arguments, his basic contention – that such elements are just as vital as imperial policies and environmental conditions in determining the creation of provincial landscapes – cannot be challenged. I predict that within five years a wide variety of such locally sensitive, landscape-based case studies will be available from across the Roman world, leading to fresh analyses of provincial variability within the empire and to cross-regional comparisons no longer strictly determined by administrative boundaries.

New Tasks The Choice Is Ours

The reforms are radically changing existing life, stereotypes, and status correlations. They bring both obvious improvements and new problems. They open the way to some at the same time that they push others down the social ladder. Painful though it may be to the reformers, the reaction to these changes is asymmetrical. If I win, it is because I am intelligent, hard-working, and lucky. If I lose, it is because the government is bad. It is good that goods have appeared, scarcity and queues have vanished, and the national currency has become convertible. After all, that is how it should be. But the fact that prices are high and the guarantee of employment is by no means as reliable as in the past is a disgrace. The old Chinese curse May you live in interesting times is well known to those who have been fated to see the first years after socialism.

Updates on Japan & Italy: Rock of Sisyphus or Road to Reform?

Updates on Japan & ItalyRock of Sisyphus or Road to Reform? Frank McNeil (bio) For Japanese reformers, the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" must seem very poignant just now. The good news for reform, and it is emphatically good news, lay in the January 1994 decision of the Diet (Japan's parliament) to change the archaic and unrepresentative system of electing members of the Lower House, the dominant body in the bicameral legislature. That system was at the heart of the corruption, institutional decay, and lack of political choice that crippled the performance of democratic political institutions, particularly in the years after 1980. The first piece of bad news was that the scandal involving the Sagawa Kyubin express-shipping company brought down yet another politician. This time it was not just another old-timer from the ranks of the former mling party, the Liberal Democrats (LDP), but the prime minister and leader of the reform coalition, Morihiro Hosokawa. He resigned in April, throwing the Japanese political world into turmoil, because of a loan he took from the company in 1982. Former deputy premier Tsutomu Hata, the natural choice, replaced Hosokawa, but the crisis exposed raw nerves among the seven parties in the shaky majority that backed the Hosokawa government. The Socialists (SDPJ) and Sakigake (Harbinger Party) voted for Hata but refused to join his government, leaving him to head a minority cabinet at a time when the [End Page 101] future course of reform is uncertain and economic recession still weighs upon the land. Even after being bolstered by a few new defectors from the LDP, Hata's government lives at the sufferance of its former coalition partners, particularly the Socialists. His cabinet could be toppled at any moment by a vote of no confidence. The new electoral system will not be in place until an independent commission, established in law and appointed by Hosokawa in his last major official act, maps out new electoral districts. This process will not be complete until July at the very earliest; dissolution before then would force elections under the old system—an outcome that is desired by some in the LDP and the SDPJ, but would be tantamount to a fraud upon the electorate. These events raise a question: Have the forces pushing major political change in Japan spent themselves? To put it another way, is reform destined to be a "rock of Sisyphus" that the reformers find roils back upon them before their goal is reached? Or are recent troubles simply the natural rites of passage to a more responsive set of democratic institutions, the consequence of what everyone knew would be a rough road to a more participatory political culture? No sure answer to these questions has yet emerged. Electoral Reform In November 1993, Hosokawa and his top collaborators, including Hata, Ichiro Ozawa, and Masayoshi Takemura (the Sakigake leader), pushed through the Lower House comprehensive electoral reforms that included not only a change in the method of electing the Lower House but new campaign-financing controls as well. An ample majority was achieved by slightly altering the government bills to ensure that some members from the LDP could either cast votes of conscience in favor of electoral reform or else abstain. The government and almost all Japanese and Western commentators—myself included—expected a rough but certain passage through the Upper House, where the ruling coalition supposedly enjoyed a secure majority. As it turned out, however, the grand compromise on electoral reform that won over the Lower House met a nearly disastrous defeat in the Upper House. The old "midsized" Lower House electoral system was a legacy from the 1920s that the U.S. occupation authorities had accepted at the urging of Japanese elites. Electoral districts were represented by three to six members, but each voter could cast a ballot for one and only one candidate. By 1955, when two conservative parties joined to form the LDP, neither the ruling conservatives nor the Socialist-led opposition liked the system. In the beginning, the LDP wanted single-member districts resembling British parliamentary constituencies so that it could amend the [End Page 102] Constitution (the midsized-district system virtually...

Visionary planning for a compassionate era

“May you live in interesting times” goes an old Chinese curse. As you contemplate the times in which we live, expand your thinking beyond business. Remember that you have children and grandchildren whose needs and future you care about, and let's start turning that curse into a blessing. Recall Margaret Mead's revelation: “We are all immigrants into a new time.”

Chinese curse—May ye live in interesting times

Chinese curse—May ye live in interesting times

It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by WILLIAM A. SILVERMAN* "I hope this bread cast upon the waters will return as ham sandwiches."— Preston Sturges "Graffiti on a wall: 'Life is one contradiction after another.' Under this another street philosopher wrote: 'It is not!' " "Here are the opinions on which my facts are based."—Anon. "The evils of controversy are temporary, its benefits are permanent."—The Rev. Robert Hall "There is a persistent unwillingness of the human mind to accept persuasion that is in conflict with evidence. All who exercise power find this latter obstinacy by far the most annoying tendency with which they have to contend."—John Kenneth Galbraith "The natural course of the human mind [proceeds] from credulity to skepticism ."—Thomas Jefferson "You can prove almost anything with the evidence of a small enough segment of time. How often in the search for truth the answer of the minute is positive, the answer of the hour qualified, the answers of the year contradictory!"— Edwin Way Teale "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They may have different tastes."—George Bernard Shaw Material appearing under this title is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and the reading hours a bit more fun. Toward this goal we invite a guest editor of this feature for each issue. Will readers volunteer to share their senses of humor by collecting or recollecting items that have brought smiles to their faces? We invite your participation. Originals are also welcomed. *Address: 90 La Cuesta Drive, Greenbrae, California 94904. 530 It Has Been Said "The dialogue between the 18th century doctor and patient that began with 'What is the matter with you?' has been replaced in the past 150 years with the question, 'Where does it hurt?' "—Michael Foucault "Millions yearn for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."—Anon. "The first key to wisdom is called interrogation ... By doubting we are led to inquiry; and from inquiry we perceive the truth."—Peter Abelard "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please."—Mark Twain "Statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital."—Anon. "The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible."—Oscar Wilde, description ofthe fox hunt "Muckraking, now called investigative reporting, is a public service to Americans , who need their daily muck to feel healthily democratic."—J. K. Fairbank "May you live in interesting times."—Old Chinese Curse "Anecdotalists use statistics the way a drunk uses a lampost—more for support than illumination."—Anon. "16th century view of life and death: life is short—it is a precarious interlude to be endured. Death is a beginning. At present: life is a long protection to be enjoyed. Death is an ending."—Anon. "Nor bring to watch me cease to live Some Doctor, full of phrase and fame To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure—a name." Matthew Arnold "Opponents of abortion sometimes argue that a fetus 'wants' to grow up into a real person. But every egg and sperm also want to become a person in this sense. And if that is the case, how can one defend either contraception or celibacy, both of which deny life to millions of eggs and sperms that 'want' to become people, and both of which involve repression of 'natural' impulses?"—Christopher Jenks "We are surrounded by priests of yogurt, single causers. God's in his chariot, headed for the Bermuda Triangle. It's enough to clog the corpus callosum."— John Leonard Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 29, 4 ¦ Summer 1986 \ 53 1 "No paper, once written, remains unpublished."—Chargaff's Rule "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."—John Gardner "... a scientific race to 'get there first' is tremendously wasteful, and . . . anything that lessens the reward for such achievement is...

EXECUTIVES' FORUM

Seven years ago, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith characterized ours as an age of uncertainty, and the last few years have not proved him wrong. The economy has bobbed up and down with oil shortages and oil gluts, high interest rates and high employment, and a soaring dollar and a record trade imbalance. A mere decade ago, neither psychics nor reputable economists could have foreseen these incongruities. Strategic planners and others charged with charting their company's course were humbled by the discrepancy between their plans and what events held in store for them. One might say we have been operating under that ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

“May you live in interesting times” a Chinese curse

Special Care in DentistryVolume 2, Issue 4 p. 148-148 “May you live in interesting times” a Chinese curse First published: July 1982 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-4505.1982.tb00037.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume2, Issue4July 1982Pages 148-148 RelatedInformation

A Rock in the Whirlwind: A Changeless God in A Changing World, A Response to “Hermeneutics and Biblical Ethics: God’s Immutability and Human Integrity” by Richard Chewning

“May you live in interesting times” says the ancient Chinese curse. We do indeed live in interesting times. Technology, particularly the Internet, is driving a paradigm change in our society that is so profound that a new economy has sprung up seemingly overnight. Futurists tell us there is likely to be more social change in the next ten years than there has been in the last century (Bell & Gray, 1997). In the context of this whirlwind of transformation, it is a jerk into reality to be reminded that God is immutable, that He does not change.