Cheng Tzu-leong's (
My friends and I suppose that Kobayashi, who once created many slapstick cartoons which made us laugh a lot, is now suffering from the fading of his creativity and is having to look for other ways to survive, such as writing about historical issues. And he is now surrounded by strong China-haters like Alice King (金美齡) who suffered under the general chaos and martial law brought by mainland Chinese after Japan had lost the war and who has tended to glorify life under Japanese rule. Kobayashi seems to be clutching at straws like these China-haters.
In Japan, most people do not take the speeches of such people so seriously and their books aren't considered suitable for the well-educated.
I hope the people of Taiwan will not insult the democracy that was secured at the cost of many lives just for his cartoon. Let Kobayashi bark freely in Taiwan. Even if he is assassinated there, it may be less disgraceful for Taiwan than banning him.
S. Asako
Osaka, Japan
Taiwan's international reputation has been gravely tarnished by the government's ban on the author of On Taiwan from entering the country.
"I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it," Voltaire is reputed to have said. However distasteful one finds an author's view, his freedom of speech must be respected and protected. It is evident that Taiwan is full of thin-skinned Chinese chauvinists, narrow-minded Japan-haters and caveman-like bureaucrats and scholars.
What's next? Have an official order issued to have copies of the book burned in public? Why not ban Chinese Communists on account of the fact that they have called some of our leaders "traitors," and "scum of the earth?" The government can certainly use the same excuse it has employed to justify its ban against the Japanese author. "The Communist Chinese view violates our national interest, public safety, public order and good customs and habits."
Have we not learned from Qin Shi Huang (
Ching-chih Chen
Illinois
Consider energy alternatives
In all the recent furor over the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant
Last fall, General Electric began test marketing a home fuel-cell generator that runs on common natural gas. The refrigerator-sized unit is produced by Plug Power and is expected to retail for, "about the same price as an economy car."
On a whim the other day I sat down to do the math. The GE fuel cell generates 7kw sustained output. The fourth nuclear plant will do 2,700Mw at a cost of US$5.5 billion -- or roughly US$2,036 per kilowatt. That means that if those GE fuel cells can be bought for anything less than US$14,000 apiece, it would be cheaper to simply equip every home in the affected area with its own generator! Of course, the point at which one becomes more economical than the other depends a lot on the useful lifetime of the equipment (15 years, for the fuel cells), and the ongoing maintenance costs -- not to mention the shutdown and disposal costs. Still, it would appear as though the power plant is -- at best -- as costly as buying the equivalent capacity in small generators.
Worried about dependence on imported natural gas? Well Taiwan doesn't produce any uranium either. Of course, we "could" have biomass, biodiesel, wind, ocean, and solar energy resources, but these would take billions of dollars to develop and deploy. Scrapping the the plant would save billions.
Add to this the obvious advantages of robust, distributed generating resources, plus the benefits of putting people to work servicing thousands of small fuel cells, windmills, solar arrays, and ocean/wave-driven generators and clean, green alternatives soon start looking better and better.
And of course, when prospecting for new energy resources, it also pays to look at conservation. For instance, how much energy would be saved if all shops in Taipei were required to have that simplest of inventions: doors that close! (Or do we need another nuclear plant so that we can air-condition Taipei's sidewalks through yet another sweltering summer?)
Now I don't pretend to have all the answers here. Surely the best minds in Taiwan ought to be able to improve on my ideas by a wide margin, and save Taiwan a lot of needless expense, risk, and embarrassment.
John Diedrichs
Taipei
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