Chinese Eucharist?

Today is the 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calendar, called "Duan Wu Jie" - the day for Dragon Boat racing and commemorating the death of Qu Yuan, faithful counselor to the emperor in the 3rd century B.C.E. My dad pointed out some similarities between Qu Yuan and Jesus this last weekend - both preaching justice, both rejected by the state, both dying for the sake of the people, and both celebrated by common peasants. To this I added that we also remember Qu Yuan's death by eating a ritual food - sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves called zong zi - like celebrating the Eucharist.

But I guess the similarities stop there - Qu Yuan committed ritual suicide protesting the corruption of the state, which I suppose could be an interpretation of the crucifixion. But the origin of the rice cake is that people would throw them into the river Qu Yuan drowned in to keep the fish from eating his body. This is the saving of the dead body, rather than the dead body saving us. And zong zi tastes better than the wafer/wine. At any rate, here's a pictorial guide for how to make it, with my mom demonstrating (don't we look alike! that's me in 30 years):

The leaf is folded and ready for filling with rice, meat, etc.
The filling is put in at the bottom of the leaf (rice, then meat, then rice to cover).

Pinching at the top of the bundle, the top half of the leaf folds over the rice.String is wrapped around the bundle, then knotted.

These are ready to be steamed. There are 2 basic kinds of zong zi - salty, with soy sauce marinated sticky rice and meat (Chinese sausage and pork) and other fillings (e.g. shitake mushrooms, peanuts, mung bean, etc.), and sweet, with sweet sticky rice and sweet red bean paste. Yum! Different colored string is used to differentiate - usually white for salty, red for sweet.

Red 44, Lake 37

I dunno... I don't remember Trix being this bright when I was a kid. The colors also seem more "hip" now - what with the chartreuse and magenta.

...And back to Greek

Can someone please explain this?!

Given these basic aspects of Epicurean physics:
1) Things are not divisable into infinity.
2) Things are made up of indivisable minima. All larger magnitudes, including atoms themselves, consist of a finite number of these minima.
3) Any perceived magnitude can be analysed into an exact number of minima, i.e. a minimum is an exact submultiple of any larger magnitude (there cannot be "bits" of minima leftover).
4) Minima are never in motion, only the magnitudes they make up move because minima are indivisable and cannot be "traversing" from point A to B - it is either in A or in B since it has no "parts".

SO, how is THIS evident?: "One further consequence should be the falsity of conventional geometry. If, for example, the perfect geometrical square could exist, its side and diagonal would be incommensurable - incompatibly with the theory of minima, in which, as we have seen, all magnitidues share a common submultiple. there is good historical evidence that Epicurus accepted this consequence, but none that he worked out in detail an alternative geometry." (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philsophers, vol. 1)

Why please? I have a vague notion that this has something to do with the Pythagorean theorem, e.g. sides = 1, diagonal = Root 2... And has anyone worked out an alternative geometry?

Geek, Not Greek

It's time I got truly geeked out again - and by truly geeked out I mean obsessing over things that will garner absolutely NO respect, probably a lot of ridicule, and get me no closer to any academic degree.

Here is the poster of Studio Ghibli's upcoming film, an adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's celebrated A Wizard of Earthsea:

Le Guin's trilogy was not my favorite...partly because "Ged" as the hero's name produced some complication when I read it aloud to M. Pronouncing it with a "guh" was weird, but as "Jed" it was even worse, like I should say, "Jed, whay doncha step out tuh the cow shed and pick me some cowcumbers." But, it will be "Geddo" in Japanese. Now that I think about it, the series seems especially amenable to Japanese adaptation, i.e. much of it makes no rational sense. I often get that feeling reading Japanese literature, like Banana Yamamoto's books: "This metaphor...makes no sense WHATSOEVER!"

You know what would be cool (this in my geekiest voice) is Studio Ghibli doing The Dark is Rising or Greenwitch - or The Grey King. While I'm at it, here is a list of my most beloved children's books that you MUST read now as an adult. I LOVE children's books, you know. I have been retroactively enriching M's childhood by reading these aloud to him (yes, I have read all these aloud to him*):

The Dark is Rising series
The Wind in the Willows
Anne of Green Gables series
Danny, the Champion of the World
The Long Secret
Fom the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
A Cricket in Times Square series
A House with a Clock in Its Walls series

And then those most people class as children's books but aren't really:
Watership Down
The Lord of the Rings
Ender's Game
The Once and Future King

*No, we don't just read children's books. In case you're curious, I've also read M:
Middlemarch
The House of Mirth
Jane Eyre
etc. Yes, I do all the reading because I can't sit still listening.

Happy Rainy Day

Just a happy moment from last summer's trip to Japan. There was a typhoon in Tokyo, as you can see, but we are happily adventuring all the same.