2 comments

  1. doc holiday

    I am struck by two introductory data points from Wiki in regard to Ailuropoda melanoleuca:

    1. Though belonging to the order Carnivora, the panda has a diet which is 99% bamboo. Pandas may eat other foods such as honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, and bananas when available.

    2. While the dragon has historically served as China’s national emblem, in recent decades the Giant Panda has also served as an emblem for the country.

    I think this photo tonight by Yves is cross-linked between consumer inflation related to both commodity prices and the recent oil spike. The metaphorical bamboo diet serves as a stark reminder of limited supplies and the potential substitution of alternative energy sources.

    Therefore, referencing the mythical symbolism of a dragon here, is related to inauspicious folklore whence a dragon was often thought to be hostile and aggressive — a raging antagonist that lives in a liar amongst a hoard of ill gotten loot.

    Thus, is it a surprise that as China reinvents or possibly renews its cultural identity in this new Millenium that it would want to appear less aggressive and thereby change symbolism associated with its global disposition?

    Substituting the conceptually mild mannered nobility of Ailuropoda melanoleuca for a fierce dragon allows The People’s Republic of China to offer a new — kinder, gentler smoothing over of the politically charged realities associated with The Chinese Communist Party and the past.

    This transition and morphing of the sleeping dragon is reminiscent of a trogan horse, and the connection to future growth which is linked to the obvious needs for water, fuel and food in a country that has 1,321,851,888 people and perhaps 3000 pandas.

    Hence, the explosive growth in China’s population will result in dragon-like hoarding of global resources, which will force the substitution of various commodities, e.g, oil, which in and of its self, may be in a state of transition in terms of supply and demand — oil may become less important in The West — if America rises to the challenge and the dream of fueling technology which is less reliant on oil, and oil executives that are linked to lobby groups.

    In the meantime, perhaps this transition by China is linked to marginal utility, or specifically to Economist Rudolf Hilferding, who willl close this spontaneous essay tonight:

    “Once finance capital has brought the most important branches of production under its control, it is enough for society, through its conscious executive organ — the state conquered by the working class — to seize financial capital in order to gain immediate control of those branches of production.”

    P.S: Actually, Neil Young seemed to fit also, but not really; in all honesty, the pandas threw me way off…

    We got a thousand points of light
    For the homeless man
    We got a kinder, gentler,
    Machine gun hand
    We got department stores and toilet paper
    Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
    Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
    Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.

  2. Anonymous

    Maybe people in China don’t wanna keep on rocking in a free world and maybe they don’t care if they over populate the world and destroy the ozone layer. We need more pandas!

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