On 08/29/11 11:47 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: > On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 13:18, Milos Rancic<mill...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 13:04, David Gerard<dger...@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.
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