For those few music lovers who have never attended one of his concerts here are some news photos tracing his meteoric rise.

These metal layers, formed through meteoric ablation, appear to be sensitive to global atmospheric changes related to changing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane.

Emphasizing China s meteoric rise means less understanding in the rest of the world of the need to sustain rapid economic development in order to satisfy the expectations of its 1.3 billion inhabitants. The government knows that it has a political tiger by the tail, but refuses to acknowledge it, either inside China or outside.

I wish Lin a long and successful career as a superstar, though he will have already had a huge cultural impact even if his success proves meteoric. One can hope that, as Asian Americans continue to break barriers in other arenas they remain under represented among corporate CEOs, for example these rising superstars will be greeted with similar acclaim.

But for every such case South Korea is the favorite example there is another, like Hong Kong, where meteoric economic growth had nothing to do with centrally planned education policy. Instead, parents pushed their children towards the best schools to give them an individual head start something parents do the world over only after they got richer.