RyanErwin.com

Definitely have a lot of sympathy for Jim Fallows fending off phone calls from angry Americans on a Tuesday morning.

C-SPAN Update after presidential visit, November 17, 2009

During the 2009 call in discussion, Fallows has to fight off many angry phone calls about lost jobs and a “Rising China”. Overall, the discussion is much more grim than during the 2007 presidential visit to China.

C-SPAN Update after presidential visit, October 21 2007

In 2007, there were some discussions about the size of China’s foreign currency reservers, some concerns about job losses, and questions about teaching english in China. Overall, the conversation was far more upbeat in 2007 than in 2009.

Interestingly, Fallows has a total of 55 C-SPAN appearances over the years. Take a look.

Fallows also has some books that are well worth reading. Personally can’t wait until Apple’s new mobile book device is released so that I can sign up for The Atlantic and The Economist directly in a mobile print edition. Would also be great to have mobile versions of Vogue and GQ for easy reading.

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ryan Economics （经济学）

If you are a China Unicom user roaming in Taiwan, and you want to contact a friend in Taipei who’s number is 999-888-777, To send a text message you have to use: +00886-999-888-777 but to make a phone call to the same friend you have to press +886-999-888-777. So, you’re address book is basically useless.

Int’l Text Message: + 00 [country code] [number]
Int’l Dialing while Roaming Overseas + [country code] [number]

ryan iPhone iPhone

To do unconditional call forwarding, to “13611881234″, you would enter:

**21*13611881234# (call)

Co cancel call forwarding, you would simply enter:

##21# (call)

For more information, call 800 858 2293. This configuration for call forwarding seems to be quite standard as it even works for T-Mobile.

ryan iPhone iPhone

If you’re in Taiwan, I highly recommend you check out “The Tango” at Xinyi.

110台北市忠孝東路五段297號2樓
297, ZhongXiao East Road, Section 5, Taipei 110, Taiwan.
Tel +886 2-2528-8000 Fax +886 2-2528-7676.
www.thetango.com.tw

ryan Uncategorized

Excellent article on SeekingAlpha stating that:

An enduring truth about financial regulation is this: Given the discretion to do so, financial regulators will always do the wrong thing.

It’s easy to explain why. In good times, regulators have every incentive to take banks at their optimistic word on asset valuations, and therefore on bank capitalization. It is almost impossible for bank regulators to be “tough” in good times, for the same reason it is almost impossible for mutual fund managers to be bearish through a bubble. A “conservative” bank examiner who lowballs valuation estimates will inevitably face angry pushback from the regulated bank. Moreover, the examiner will be “proven wrong”, again and again, until she loses her job. Her fuddyduddy theories about cash flow and credit analysis will not withstand empirical scrutiny, as crappy credits continually perform while asset prices rise. Valuations can remain irrational much longer than a regulator can remain employed.

Bad times, unfortunately, follow good times, and regulatory incentives are to do the wrong thing yet again. When bad times come, overoptimistic valuations have been widely tolerated. In fact, they will have become very common. Overvaluation of assets leads to overstatement of capital. Overstatement of capital permits banks to increase the scale of their lending, which directly increases reported profitability. Banks that overvalue wildly thrive in good times. Fuddyduddy banks lag and their CEOs are ousted and The Economist runs snarky stories about what schlubs they are. The miracle of competition ensures that many of the most important and successful banks will have balance sheets like helium balloons at the end of a boom. Then, like a pin from outer space, somebody somewhere fails to repay a loan.

Complete Article.

Interestingly, the author offers the solution that keeping every bank relatively small would be more able to prevent financial crisis.

However, if regulators can’t keep track of asset values, then can we expect them to keep a reasonable view of when a bank is too large?

ryan Uncategorized

The people in the Hebei Province 河北省 cities of Chengde 承德 and Shijiazhuang 石家庄 speak truly standard mandarin, and the people in Beijing like to think of themselves as standard. In any case, my accent is much better than the average Hong Kong’er speaking mandarin, but still a long way off 承德 or 石家庄. I’ve been thinking about using some software tools to help me improve further.

First, there is an amazing organization called SIL International that has mapped out more than 2,550 of the worlds lesser known languages. SIL has developed more than 60 pieces of software to support their linguists in the field, and most of these are available free on their website. Speech Analyzer looks particularly interesting.

SIL has a “Linguistic Creed” that comes across to me as particularly brilliant.

Linguistic Creed
Benjamin F. Elson, September, 1987

We believe that language is one of God’s most important gifts to man, and of all human characteristics, language is the most distinctly human and the most basic. Without language, culture and civilization would be impossible.

We also believe that any language is capable of being a vehicle for complicated human interaction and complex thought, and can be the basis for a complex culture and civilization.

Therefore, all languages deserve respect and careful study.

As the most uniquely human characteristic a person has, a person’s language is associated with his self-image. Interest in and appreciation of a person’s language is tantamount to interest in and appreciation of the person himself.

All languages are worthy of preservation in written form by means of grammars, dictionaries, and written texts. This should be done as part of the heritage of the human race.

Every language group deserves to see its language in print and to have some literature written in it.

Minority language groups within a larger nation deserve the opportunity of learning to speak, read, and write the national language.

As you dive into linguistics, you’ll find yourself using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) quite frequently. Even the Keyboard Layout for inputing IPA characters as a Mac OS X input method is provided by SIL. If you’re looking for specific instructions to input the IPA fonts, try this tutorial.

Last, curious what decibel levels your ears respond to in different frequency ranges? The University of New South Wales has put together an online hearing test to help you visualize the your equal loudness contours and audiometry. Take a look.

ryan Uncategorized

If you need to get to some horrible airport that doesn’t even have a subway connection – well my first thought is good luck. But sometimes you have no choice in the matter. Well, keep in mind that Taxi slots start booking on Saturday morning! So as soon as you’ve got your airline tickets booked, you should call 大众 (dazhong) or 海波 (haibo) to reserve a ride to the airport.

If you’ve got to have a taxi waiting for you at 8:00 AM, and you’re reserving the night before – well don’t bother.

大众： 96822（dazhong）
海波： 96933 （haibo）
巴士： 96840 （bashi)
锦江： 96961 （jinjiang）
强生： 6258 0000 （qiangsheng）
上海市出租车统一电话调号码 96965 (meta-number)

ryan Shanghai （上海）

Sometimes we are not 100% sure what exactly we are supposed to do next. Maybe we’re thinking about who to date or who to marry. Maybe we’re thinking about our career or our business. Maybe we’re thinking about our friends or our family. Maybe we’re thinking about education or investment options.

There is nobody that knows YOU better than YOU know you. So based on that premise, there’s a site called “FutureMe.org” that allows you to create an email and send it to yourself at some date in the future.

So the next time you’re not sure what exactly to do. Just relax. No rush. Write down all of the pros and the cons about your decision. Or thoroughly describe the situation, including the assumptions you’ve made and describe what it is you need to know next, or what you’re unclear about.

Give yourself 1 month. 3 months. Or even a year. Then press send and breath a sigh of relief. You’ve started to analyze the process. You’ve documented it. Simply persist and greater happiness will follow.

ryan Philosophy （哲学）

哪天我的每一句话都比这个录音好听，那天就可以说我的普通话真不错

ryan Voice Recordings （录音）