Eight+ Things to Read About China and Other Things, Part 12

This is the twelfth episode in our ongoing Saturday series on eight+ things to read about China and a lot more. We constantly get emails from readers asking what to read on China and all sorts of things related and even barely related to China and this series is intended to constantly and consistently answer these questions.

As we said in our initial post on this, our plan is to list out eight (or so) articles we benefitted from reading and think you our readers would also benefit from reading, along with a very brief explanation as to why the particular article was included. More specifically:

The articles will likely include many on China and on Asia and a few on international trade, international politics, Spain and Latin America, economics and really just anything else we believe might benefit our readers or even that we just want people to read. We do not plan to choose articles that push our or any other political agenda or any other agenda for that matter, but having said that, we are not objective and our views may creep through. Our goal though is to focus on articles that are important or helpful or — most importantly — that make you think. Our posting of an article will NOT mean we agree with all of it or even any of it. Most of the articles will be from the week preceding the post but we will also sometimes throw in older articles (classics if you will) as well.

Please do not hesitate to comment at the end of this or any other post. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate your comments, good, bad and indifferent.

Here we go, in absolutely no particular order.

1. Father of twins who died in a hot car gets support from a crowd at court hearing. CNN. Because as a lawyer and a father, I’ve become obsessed with this case. Because my first instinct upon hearing of the case was that the father should never see the light of day but now I believe he should be released. Because the father made a mistake — a horrible mistake — and his life will be ruined whether he is jailed or not. Because there is no evidence (at least as far as I can tell from the media) that he is anything but a decent person and not a killer. Because I once drove to work with my baby daughter in a car seat in the back seat of my car. She fell asleep and because I pretty much never took her to work, I forgot about her and I left her in the car in an indoor parking lot. I got up to my office and our receptionist asked where she was because I had said I would be bringing her. I just about fainted and I immediately ran back to the car where she had been contently sleeping for the last 5 or so minutes(that felt like hours). I tell this story as often as I can because I believe I was lucky and that this sort of thing can happen to anyone. Because most of the time when I tell this story I hear stories from great people/great parents who went grocery shopping with their forgotten kid sleeping in the car or dropped off one kid at elementary school and then went home and left their baby sleeping in the car until the spouse called and asked “how things were going” or went out to lunch with a law school classmate while their kid was sleeping upstairs. I could go on and on. There are three super important morals to this. One, forgiveness is sometimes more appropriate than punishment. Two, be careful of judging unless you truly know. And three, do not believe this same thing could not happen to you and do whatever you can by way of reminders, etc., to make sure it does not.

2. Mustachioed puppy goes viral, named for resemblance to Salvador Dali. Fox. Because this puppy (now named Salvador Dolly) does bear an uncanny resemblance to Salvador Dali.

3. Four big Chinese films have been pulled in a month with barely an explanation. CNN. Because this is how you quickly decimate a movie industry.

4. Woman who urinated on potatoes at Walmart turns self in. BoingBoing. Because who pees on potatoes? At Walmart or anywhere else?