[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Ray Saintonge]

On 08/29/11 11:47 AM, Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 13:18, Milos Rancic<millosh at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 13:04, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> But then, central planning is famous for its notable successes in economics.
>> Fortunately, we wouldn't have to eat passers to make it clear how the
>> central planning is economically successful.
> Thanks to David Richfield, I've realized that this sentence requires
> explanation. So here it is:
>
> Sparrows [1], but Serbian Wikipedia article "sparrow" leads to
> "passer" and I am bad in flora and fauna terminology.
>
> Eating sparrows is one of the commons issues during the first phase of
> the Great Leap Forward during Mao and was a product of centralized
> economy.
>
> The anecdote goes: Mao woke up one day and said "Sparrows are guilty
> for everything!" After that, it a country-wide hunt on sparrows have
> been made. Then, fields without sparrows became easy target for
> grasshoppers and the next couple of years were known as the time of
> great famine in China [2]. Eventually, even during Mao's rule, China
> abandoned centralized economy.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passer
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
>
>
Not that I want to carry this diversion too far, but sparrows are 
normally seed eaters.

Ray