I have been invited by my friend Professor Manoj Joshi to join the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Amity Business School (JABS). The journal is new and resembles in publishing structure our own SIU Journal of Management, the first issue of which is still due before the end of the month.
Once more specific information for JABS is available, I will post it here.
It always strikes me that the difference between fantasy fiction and fable is that the former makes some effort to conform to a meaningful form of reality, albeit one that has never existed. The latter, on the other hand, takes modern people and transplants them into another place more or less unchanged with a view to watching how they will react to a change in fortunes or circumstances. In the case of The Tree Singer, we are introduced to the world of Jacob, who is a fifteen year-old youth at the start of the story and who encounters a mysterious stranger, Simon, who comes unexpectedly out of the undergrowth.
Read the full review here.
Any book that deals with virtual reality inevitably brings to mind the work of William Gibson and, of course, Neuromancer. This has both positive and negative aspects, since it both provides a mental foundation of the nature of virtual reality and the intrusion of quasi-physical beings into that world and, also, acts as a reminder that so much of the necessary framework has already been established. Gibson posited a world of petty and not so petty criminals using stolen or created in Heath Robinson style using improvised bits and pieces from junkyards and second hand shops.
Read the full review here.
My short trip to Hong Kong to attend the Invest SEA seminar has finished and from my point of view was quite successful – I gave my paper about Chinese investment in the Mekong Region and was not booed off the stage or subjected to criticism. So that is good.
The conclusions of the workshop were many – from 11 papers (only nine of which were actually given), a wide range of points emerged in terms of the scale of investment (e.g. micro, corporate and macro), strategic (emergent or deliberative) and outcome (positive, negative, too soon to tell and so forth). My point, echoed by others, that where conflict was accompanying Chinese investment was really the effect of the spread of capitalism and the conversion of existing primitive market conditions (I use the term ‘feudal’) into more advanced capitalist relations received some support. A lot of what is going on in parallel or shadow state spaces, which are no longer governed by state governments, is a form of ‘cowboy capitalism’ or ‘wild west capitalism.’ Discussions are due to continue as to how this set of papers will, if at all, be published – I am hopeful of something quite substantial emerging but we shall see.
Anyway, I was only there for a couple of nights and, since it ws raining almost non-stop, had very little time to walk about the city for sightseeing. Anyway, this is the view of the city from my room in the Royal Plaza Hotel.
I did pop out briefly on Thursday evening across the Prince Edward East Road to look at the bird market and the flower market. Here is a photo of some budgies in a cage:
There were also some other birds hanging around, including some sea birds and a version of what we call here the Oriental Robin Magpie. So, here are some sparrers:
I also had a quick look at the flower market, by which time it was starting to rain again and so I did not really hang around. This is one view of the aforementioned flower market:
