Dave Mancuso dot Com

[My brother Joe lives in Guam and travels all over that part of the world whenever he gets vacation. Right now he’s off to China, and he’s letting me post some of the travelogue notes he’s sending out. Pretty interesting stuff.]

Post 8, China:
“It sure is a great wall”…Richard Nixon, 1972

So we got to Jinshaling without further incident and made to hike to Simitai, along the least touristed section of the wall. These sections are unimproved, authentic and the most elaborate constructions along the wall. Some areas are partially disintegrated, many were near perfect, set against rolling mountians, lush green forests, sheer cliffs, rocky ravines, river valleys and such. Parts of the trek were climbing on all fours, straight up…really cool stuff. Hard to imagine troops mobilizing cannons very far.

The hike was beautiful and I HIGHLY recommend taking the time to see this rarely visited section the the wall (it is 4 hours each way from Beijing). At the end many of us chose to ride the cable harness to the bottom of the river valley and take a boat back to the bus pickup point. What a ride…;-)

Hope your Fourth of July was great. Keep you posted.

More on Simitai:
“Simatai is the only section of the Great Wall which retains the original features of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. It is 5.4km in length, with 35 beacon towers. Ingeniously conceived and uniquely designed, inimitable and diversified, Simati incorporates the differing characteristics of each section of the Wall. Clinging precariously to Yanshan Mountain, this unique stretch is known for its steepness and ingenuity.
Its steepness is simply because it was built on a precipitous mountain, but it also offers many spots that are unparalleled on other of the Wall’s sections. Simatai’s Tianti (Heavenly Ladder) and Tianqiao (Sky Bridge) are particularly dangerous unless one is safety conscious. If you suffer from vertigo, don’t look down. You could be transfixed with fear.
Simitai’s ingenuity comes in where its many beacon towers are concerned. It is densely dotted with them, one pair of them being a mere 43.8 meters apart while two others have 600 meters between them. Other sections? towers were built at intervals of 500 meters. At Simitai, the walls are in single, double and trapeziform forms, the watchtowers being round or oblate with two or three floors. The roofs of the towers are also diverse: some are flat, some cymbiform and some domical.
That the Simitai section is imposing and unique is beyond question, the more so in that it has limestone caves beneath it. Perhaps more interesting is that two springs called Mandarin Duck are at the foot of the Wall. The eastern duck is cold, its counterpart warm. The springs converge into a single lake, which means that half its waters are cold, the remainder warm. In winter, hot steam rises from the lake to form a marvelous spectacle.”

[Joe sent a great pic of the wall along, but I’m not sure I should post it, copyright and all.]

As you can see below from the quoted spam/scam email I got in my inbox last week, they’re even personalizing the scams now. Think I should go for the money? Theo says it’s a sure thing (wink, wink). I’ll miss Bernard, even though he never existed…

“Attn: Dave Mancuso

I am Barrister THEOPHILUS OKOH personal attorney to late MR. BERNARD MANCUSO, a national of your country, who used to work with Chevron Oil Company here in Nigeria herein after, shall be referred to as my client. My client with his entire family (The wife and two Children) was involved in the explosion in Lagos, Nigeria, on January 27, 2002, that claimed many lives and properties. Regrettably, my client and the family lost their lives in that unfortunate incident. Since then I have made several inquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives this has also proved unsuccessful. After several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family hence I contacted you.
My purpose of contacting you is to assist in repatriating/retrieving the money and property left behind by my client prior to his death before they are declared unserviceable by the company and the bank where the deceased had an account valued at about US$2.8 Million dollars. The bank had issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account close while the money sent to the federation account in compliance to Nigeria banking ethics. Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over one year now I seek your consent as the next of kin of the deceased since you have the same last name/surname so that the proceeds of this account valued at US$2.8 million dollars with accrued interest up to date can be paid to you. I have all the necessary official and legal documents that can be used to back up your claim. All I require is your honest co-operation to enable me as the legal attorney to the deceased in seeing that you receive your inheritance fund. I guarantee that this will be executed legitimately to protect you from any breach of the law.”

I’ve been too swamped to post much to the blog in the last few weeks (those of you who have watched have seen it decompress and lose shape literally), so I have a couple of posts from my brother Joe on his further travels in China. This one makes American road rage look tame by comparison–read Joe’s email for yourself:

“Drunken Boxing techniques are based on the legend of the ‘Eight Immortals’ of the Taoist Sect from Chinese Mythology. Each of the techniques in the Drunken Set demonstrates an attribute of one of the Immortals. The principle concept behind Drunken Kung Fu, is to move as if one were half drunk. The secret behind Drunken style kung fu is the sudden release of power from awkward positions.”

On the way to Jinshaling, North of Beijing, to hike to Great Wall to Simatai, our bus was cut off making a left turn in the left lane – from the left… The taxi driver who nearly capsized us, spun out and came to a stop causing a traffic freeze. He was so convinced of his right he got out and went into a rage in the middle of the road (a divided 8 lane boulevard). Our driver was a young wiry guy who looked like he had had a long night out with his buddies and had been too long without a cigarette. Yeah you can see where this is going… Forget about meditative face preservation and control of emotions.Â¬Ý Apparently some things in the East are settled the hard way.

The taxi driver grabbed our driver by the shirt and they wrestled back and forth exchanging their own deeply philsophical viewpoints on the accident. The guy just wasn’t giving in… then it happened…The taxi driver struck first (we were all amazed as he was twice our drivers age, but he was much larger). He looked like he was dancing like a baboon in heat but landed a pretty solid one in the chest of our driver.

Battle in Beijing… Shaolin showdown. Thrilla in Manila… Our guy woke up and came loose at the seams. He danced around the other guy smacking him around, until he had him beside his car hood, then came down off his heels with a head blow that we could hear inside the bus over the horns blaring. The taxi driver hit the hood with a thump and staggered around for awhile, his eye was swelling shut fast. He looked as if he had calmed down and asked our driver to call the police. Our driver – still shaking- gladly obliged, walking away to dial… Then the bus driver tried to reach into our bus and grab the keys to throw them down the sewer. I was riding shotgum so I grabbed them and went to push him away when our driver came back for more.

Bystanders cleared the way and our driver took the chance to clear out. What a trip, it was not even 10am yet and we already got our money’s worth. I got off a clear shot of the fight but when I turned over my camera to have the pictures burned to CD, both copies (camera and CD) were gone. Coincidence or Big Brother watching? Who knows in communist China… I plan to try to salvage the files when I get back to Guam.

God, I love this country…

…and it isn’t pretty. The picture doesn’t do them justice–the muck was worse in person.

It’s here (http://hokev.brinkster.net/quiz/default.asp?quiz=Better+Personality&page=1). The last time I linked to a site like this, Kevin found some malicious code on it, but this one seems OK. I think Bill’s computer has, like, six firewalls wrapped around each other in his PC, so he’ll be the first to find anything remotely bad,

I came up as a SRCL, but I think I’m much closer to a SECL.

Yet fun if you have a few seconds. Be the fly and bug someone else for a change.

I’m not familiar with many of them (I think I’m not open-minded enough musically), but I bet Dan likes the list.

It was amazing (no pun intended).

See it. It will not disappoint. What a powerful story.

This’ll be book 6. It’s called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and CNN has the details. I guess I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, although Rowling has some difficulty with plotting and pacing. I’m more glad that the books are getting kids to read, although I did like the last Potter book the second time I read it (the first time was a year ago–I read all 900 pages on one day on my trip out to Seattle, so I did rush through it a bit).

We’ve mentioned government and politics here before, and I had an idea this weekend. Conservative, moderate, and liberal readers visit this site, all differing in position yet all very well reasoned, intelligent individuals.

So I was thinking: what if we redesigned a goverment from scratch? Just in theory? Built the thing up from plank one to the entire thing? Could we find something that we all could agree on?

I think it would be very interesting, to say the least. I’d like to start with some basic philosophical tenets and then build the government branches and services. I wonder how far we’d get.

If it gathers enough steam, I’ll buy a domain name and host it as a subdomain to keep things separate. I’ll also turn on the forums on this site so things can flow more freely.

Maybe in a year we’ll have an interesting government scheme.

I’d like to start off with the beginnings of a philosophical base, as simple as we can make (and keep) it. Somewhat lifted from one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, it goes like this:

1) All citizens have the right of any free act, unless that act hinders the freedom of another person. Government must support this without growing beyond what is absolutely necessary to enforce this tenet of freedom.

2) Government support for children should be paramount; that is to say, assistance should be ready for those who are not old enough to support themselves. Welfare, for instance, would be substantially provided as child care while able adults seek and gain employment.

The first is more of a constitutional argument, while the second is more of a services viewpoint, but it’s a start. Over the next week I’d like to frame out the services goverment should provide (roads, police, armies, public aid, foreign aid, etc.), from a federal standpoint.

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