Travel book lookups regarding Porter's The Silk Road

I like to look up various spots in travel books. Porter starts in Hong Kong, and thrills us with tails of avoiding over priced travel.

Traveling the silk road with Bill Porter in The Silk Road starts in Xian:

I didn't know China is named after the Qin Dynasty.

Underground Warriors. Wikipedia calls it the Terracotta Army.

"Impressive thought it was, a person can only stare at such a sight for so long. After a half hour we had seen enough." (p. 14)

There's a TV show called Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors (2024) on Netflix I probably won't watch.

Kukai, one of my many spiritual heroes, could have seen the Goose Pagoda when he was in Xi'an.

They went to the Emperor Wu's tomb, a hill, that those warriors were supposed to be guarding.

I'm not sure where I've read about Yang Guifei before, but I've seen those statues. She's among the 4 great beauties of ancient history.

Famen Temple. Supposedly there's a Buddha finger there. Ashoka supposedly sent it in the 3rd century, but it took till the 6th century for the Buddhists of China to realize what they had. “ For a nominal fee, Finn and I even got a certificate proving that we did, indeed, pay our respects to the same finger that pointed to the Middle Path 2,500 years ago.”

The flow of information flowed along the Silk Road, and Buddhism spread along it.

Later monasteries are repositories of information. Books carried portable information.

The internet is just the latest conduit.

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Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

The case for Harris

Motley Kamuka Blog endorses Kamala Harris. In general, Trump just wants to lower taxes on the rich, and do nothing, sell whatever influence he can to line his pockets. Apparently the emoluments clause in the constitution has no teeth. Harris has a set of ideas about policy that are fairly middle of the road. In most countries she's would be seen as a centrist. Spin about her radical agendas are exaggerated. I'm not sure how he got past " grab them by the pussy ", but he did and here we are. Women: Obviously the idea of giving women pregnancy tests at the borders of the state, and then if they come back and don't have a baby, they go to jail, isn't really what most women want. Pick Harris. I understand if you think abortion is murder, maybe you've been told that by the Catholic church, which has the same ideal of Buddhism that you don't kill--so follow your religion for yourself. Not everyone is Christian or Buddhist or even has a religion. Women are ...

Gravity's Rainbow Notes Franz Pokler

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