Ma Jun Quotes
People realised this is real pollution; it is not fog. Now everyone has to face the data and come out of their comfort zone.
Kaiman, Jonathan. "Chinese Struggle Through 'Airpocalypse' Smog." The Guardian, 16 Feb. 2013.
There are those who worry that we will run out of oil. However, as Khosla observes, the more immediate danger is the pollution of the planet’s air supply by burning fossil fuels like oil in large volumes.
The Peoples’ Daily is an official Communist Party Outlet.
This quotation on the surface appears to be a clear summary of the scientifically measured negative aspects to coal. However, it was an extremely bitter political quotation. The reason was that West Virginia and the other parts of Appalachia depend on coal for employment—jobs for the residents in a poverty-stricken area where there are few other potential sources for employment. Coal is also a key economic component of the economy in Wyoming. These states regard the reduction of coal as an energy source as one of the most serious political threats to their states and the treat it accordingly. West Virginia has Democratic Senators and congressmen from Appalachia. Wyoming has Republicans. Both exert enormous pressure on their Congressional Party leadership and the White House. With the country and Congress split at the time, Republicans had control of the House, and Democrats, the Senate and the Presidency—by very narrow margins so the leaderships cannot offend anyone in Congress. The result is that there was almost total silence about the huge coal pollution problem, and even in the second decade of the 21st century, where shale natural Gas was extractable in sufficient quantities to totally replace Coal as a fuel source, few in Congress or the administration ever even spoke of adopting a national policy to this effect, much less passed any legislation. During this period many Americans sickened and died as a result of coal every year with no end in sight.
Ma Jun, courtesy name Deheng, was a Chinese mechanical engineer and politician who lived in the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period of China. His most notable invention was that of the south-pointing chariot, a directional compass vehicle which actually had no magnetic function, but was operated by use of differential gears (which applies equal amount of torque to driving wheels rotating at different speeds). It is because of this revolutionary device (and other achievements) that Ma Jun is known as one of the most brilliant mechanical engineers and inventors of his day (alongside Zhang Heng of the earlier Eastern Han dynasty). The device was re-invented by many after Ma Jun, including the astronomer and mathematician Zu Chongzhi (429–500). In the later medieval dynastic periods, Ma Jun's south-pointing chariot was combined in a single device with the distance-measuring odometer.
