Opened in January, an exhibition of the advances of forensic science has been getting a lot of attention of late
By David Momphard
While riding with his procession, Sun Deng (孫登), a prince of the Kingdom of Wu, was nearly knocked from his horse by a shot that passed within a hair's breadth of him. One of Sun's guards was no sooner off his mount than he'd apprehended the alleged villain, slingshot and pellets in hand. The man protested his innocence and the guard pummeled him for a confession, but Sun ordered the guard to stop and search for the pellet. It was retrieved and the prince examined it closely, compared it with others in the suspect's bag, and determined the pellet came from elsewhere. The man gained his freedom and forensic science gained a foothold in ancient China.

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Nuannuan was formerly Taiwan's main exporter of assam indigo dyestuff, but the industry fell into a long decline. Now, with the popularity of indigo dyeing, residents are beginning to revive the ancient craft
By Vico Lee
A stone plaque next to the Wu Shi Ren Gong Temple (五十人公廟) near Nuannuan (暖暖), Taipei County, bears witness to the history of Taiwan's assam indigo industry, which thrived up until the end of the 19th century. "In the mid-Qing dynasty, a group of ancestors living near the Keelung River grew assam indigo at the present location of this temple, for trade in Mangga (present-day Wanhua)," it says.

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The Shan Grira Paradise is an amusement park with some rooms to spare, where masks have been hung on walls to justify the term `exhibition'
By Max Woodworth
The fact that practically anything in Taiwan merits a festival should have been warning enough. But the Miaoli International Mask Festival for some reason just beckoned with its outrageous theme. If someone's going to have the gusto to set up a months-long festival in Miaoli based around masks -- and call it "international," no less -- then extra curatorial thought must have been put into the exhibitions to pique interest in a subject that cannot be intrinsically interesting to many people.

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The Angel Creative Dream Park is a small, spic-and-span exhibition space that has featured low-key, mostly oil painting shows since its opening last summer. Its current show, titled "Nature and Art," which opened this week and runs through May 2, is a solo exhibit by Taiwanese oil painter Huang Song (黃頌).

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The Taipei City Government has gathered some long-term expats to offer their thoughts on the city
By Bradley Winterton
Subtitled "Expat Residents Look at their Second Home," this is a collection of essays penned by 16 foreigners who either currently live in Taipei or have done so in the recent past. A full-page author photo precedes each essay, and many other color pictures adorn the texts.

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The charges against the US president and his administration have been heard before, but Richard A. Clarke takes joy in repeating them
By Michiko Kakutani
Given the howling political fire-storm in the US over Richard A. Clarke's new book, Against All Enemies, it is surprising how familiar many of his assertions sound, his recitation of pre-9/11 antiterrorism missteps by the US President George W. Bush and former president Bill Clinton administrations echoing earlier books and old newspaper and magazine articles. Had it not appeared during the presidential campaign season, had members of the Bush administration not so vociferously attacked its author, had Clarke not appeared ubiquitously on TV as a whistle-blower, the volume might not have become the incendiary bestseller that it is.

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