IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT & ENID FOGEL

ROBERT W. FOGEL 

July 1, 1926-June 11, 2013 

ENID M. FOGEL 

1923-September 2, 2007 

Published in TIME Magazine 
June 17, 1974, p. 98 

on the occasion of the publication of 

TIME ON THE CROSS 

(co-written with Stanley Engerman)  

In 1993, Robert Fogel won, with Douglass North, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.  Enid Fogel is memorialized here and here (with a later photograph of the two of them); there is much more about Robert Fogel here and here and here and here and here and here. 

Quotation for the day (from the Los Angeles Times): 

"'My main point, of course, was that markets don't guarantee that evil systems will collapse, because sometimes they're very effective, and only political intervention can bring an immoral system to an end,' Fogel told The Times after winning the Nobel.  'That was the lesson: Morality is a higher human goal than just efficiency.'"  

KOFI ANNAN QUITS. RUSSIA IS SHOCKED, SHOCKED!

KOFI ANNAN

QUITS AS

SPECIAL ENVOY

ON THE SYRIA CRISIS

KOFI ANNAN (r.)

speaks to

VLADIMIR PUTIN (l.)

at the 2006 Expanded G-8 Summit

St. Petersburg, Russia

Today former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced his resignation from the post of U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy on the Syrian crisis (see here). "In an announcement tinged with bitterness and regret," said the New York Times, Annan "said he could no longer do the job...." According to the Los Angeles Times, Annan's quitting "appeared to be an unpleasant surprise to Russian officials...." Kofi Annan himself was critical of the "finger pointing and name calling in the Security Council."

IN HONOR OF THOMAS & ELIZABETH SAVAGE

THE SAVAGES

OF MAINE

(& MONTANA)

THOMAS SAVAGE

April 25, 1915-July 25, 2003

ELIZABETH SAVAGE

February 15, 1918-July 15, 1989

&

THE MOON OVER MAINE

From an appreciation in the Boston Globe: "Elizabeth Savage is a wonderful novelist. Her books restore your faith in the form, for they lay before you vast stretches of truth -- like bolts of heavy, textured cloth. A fierce story-teller, she holds you with a narrative voice of triumphant common sense."

From an L.A. TIMES review of Thomas Savage's POWER OF THE DOG: "Savage writes like thunder and lightning. A flash will illuminate startling detail, a rumble will bring fierce revelation, a philosophy, a big picture."

TAIWAN HOLDS AN ELECTION; WANG DAN IS IN THE NEWS

MA YING-JEOU

RE-ELECTED

PRESIDENT OF TAIWAN

WANG DAN AT HARVARD

A.M., 2001, Ph.D, 2008

STUDENT LEADER IN BEIJING IN 1989

("TIANANMEN," "JUNE 4")

SEVEN YEARS IN CHINESE JAILS

NOW TEACHING AT

NATIONAL TSING HUA UNIVERSITY

HSINCHU, TAIWAN

As a sidebar on the Taiwan elections held today, the Washington Post ran a piece by Andrew Higgins featuring a lecture by Wang Dan on "why China, too, needs elections." What made this deemed newsworthy was apparently the presence in the audience of students from the mainland, some of whom "rushed to pose for a souvenir photograph with the man reviled by Beijing as a 'counter-revolutionary' agitator."

In the end, Beijing's preferred candidate in the Taiwanese presidential race, the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou, won handily enough, though with a smaller margin than last time. The details and some of the context can be found here.

The L.A. Times article quotes a People's Daily editorial which says, seemingly without any sense of irony, "Ma Ying-jeou's victory was the choice made by Taiwan's people."

RHP (RANK HATH PRIVILEGE): THE CHINESE RULING ELITE & THEIR CARS

THE ELITE FLEET

CARS AWAITING THEIR OFFICIALS

IN THE INTERIOR COURTYARD OF

THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE

DURING THE 17th CONGRESS OF

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

BEIJING, OCTOBER 2007

The Audi A6 is identified as the "semiofficial car of the Chinese Communist Party" by Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times this week (here). Above is a flock of Audis waiting for delegates to the 17th Congress of the CC to be disgorged from the Great Hall of the People in October 2007. Cars for the privileged in the People's Republic of China are not new, and popular anger against the abuses of this system has been noted before, for example, in a 2006 Edward Cody piece in the Washington Post (here). What is perhaps new is the posting of cellphone photographs of offending vehicles online, reported by Demick.

An earlier example of this well-worked-out system of RHP (Rank Hath Privilege) can be seen here, in a photograph taken three decades ago in Nanjing.

MACHU PICCHU CENTENARY II

MACHU PICCHU

IS "DISCOVERED"

July 24, 1911: Yale History lecturer HIRAM BINGHAM III "climbed a 

2,000-foot-tall slope and encountered an abandoned stone city of which 

no record existed," writes Mark Adams.

(Notice: Adams carefully writes "encountered," and not discovered.)

This year, the centenary, one million visitors are expected.

Mark Adams's long article in the New York Times (he has also written a 

book, TURN RIGHT AT MACHU PICCHU, which I have not yet read), 

is here.

Christopher Reynolds, who has been to Machu Picchu three times since 

1988, has another perspective in a piece in the Los Angeles Times, here.

For some information on the official, Peruvian, celebration, held earlier 

this month, see here.

To see some of my other photographs of Machu Picchu please go to 

the LABELS row at the bottom of this posting, or use your find 

function ("Machu Picchu"), and for more "Peru Scenes," see here.

"FOOD IS THE PEOPLE'S GOD": CHINA THEN AND NOW

MORE 

FOOD SAFETY  

FEARS 

IN CHINA 

MOTHER & DAUGHTER & CHOPSTICKS 

XI'AN, CHINA, 1981 

Barbara Demick has a powerful article in the Los Angeles Times about food safety scares in China today, with this quote from one  Xiao Andong: "We have a saying in China that 'food is the people's god,' so obviously it is very scary for ordinary people when things like this happen" (for details, see here). 

Above, a photograph of the pleasure of eating thirty years ago, at the start of "Reform & Opening Up"; here and here, two samples of one free market in food at the same time (Eat Fresh!  Eat Local). 

one in a series on 

CHINA THEN & NOW