A prominent Japanese seismologist rattled some nerves when he declared there was a 70 percent chance of a major earthquake in or around Tokyo — in the next four years. Government scientists had proclaimed a similar risk, but over a longer timeframe, 30 years.
When Chinese American writer Gish Jen read her father's autobiography it sparked her to explore a tension in her own life that she's long written about in her fiction. She calls it her "struggle between Emerson and Confucius."