And yet nobody is going to do anything about it because most U.S. politicians are in the pockets of the insurance and drug companies anyway. Having seen SiCKO and listened to this NPR interview I last blogged about, it’s pretty clear that whenever big corporations have too much influence in the policy making process for the well fare of the general public, it’s probably never a good idea. I mean, why would a big company have any kind of genuine interest in the well being of the general public when all it cares about (and mandated by law to do) is to return max profit to the shareholders!?

But I digress. I am not even a citizen here… Caring this much about something I have no influence over and can get no benefits from is probably unhealthy…

One last thing I want to point out is how well spoken and points well addressed by a former Member of British Parliament Tony Benn about this issue.

Contrasting the way he speaks with most of how American politicians speak (except maybe Obama), it’s almost like night and day… British politicians have this graceful and charming way of putting issues in a language that is pleasant to listen to and reflects their intelligence and sophistication on the matters. I especially find Geroge W. Bush’s speeches distasteful and blunt (and in unpolished) to listen to because they always seem to be dumbed down and make no sense at all!

But again, I digress.

And that’s why I get pretty sick of the people running the show today, both in the government agencies and in private corporations, that they are just such hypocrites when they preach one thing and do exactly the opposite (much like many, sorry, self-proclaimed religious people, I know) and still feel good about it. Stuff like “SiCKO” and this latest interview of Mark Schapiro on NPR just makes me sit in my chair at awe wondering just how in the name of this wonderful Christian God of theirs are they doing the world any kind of justice by making those decisions affecting the lives of millions.

The interview is informative, insightful and very educational. But at the same time, it’s scary and sickening to see what the actual “gut” of what’s going on between Europe and the good old U.S. of A.

Anyway… just another day’s rant. Sorry. But DO listen to the interview. It’s fascinating.

One thing that surprised me (and made me doubt the whole “Whole Foods” philosophy) is the fact that they carry that Fiji bottled water that traveled a gazillion miles all the way across the ocean. I mean, if they were so into this “environment” and “local” thing, wouldn’t they have left out Fiji brand water altogether? WTF? Talk about being hypocritical…

Speaking of hypocritical, we picked up a bottle of Wholezyme and some groceries at Whole Foods anyway. But the sheer size of the new store made me feel a little dizzy — or maybe it was the sheer number of people in the store at the time. On the upside, the store does offer FREE Wifi!

Still no luck in Steve Jobs sighting though*. I can’t really leave California until I’ve seen him at least once, even if it’s from a distance… But then again, at least I’ve already seen the other Steve in person.

* He’s been seen frequenting Whole Foods store in Cupertino.

Great show. It will be worth your time.

Jason semi-made me watch Zeitgeist the Movie a few days ago. And everything that I suspected was wrong but couldn’t link them together now all made sense… Thanks, Jason… Now I am officially a coo coo head.

Basically the movie covers three major, separate but interlinked, sections:
1. Religion (specifically Christianity) and what it really IS
2. Tracing the cause of major wars and American involvements in the past 60 years, including the latest 911-related ones
3. The “real” beginning of the Federal Reserve Bank and why the Founding Fathers actually opposed such institution

I did some fact checking on some of the points made in the film (specifically on #3) since I know something about the history of Federal Reserve from my economics classes. And just prior to watching the film, I also got a chance to listen to a fascinating radio program on Alexander Hamilton and how he was a champion of having an institution like the Federal Reserve/Central Bank (which was one reason why Thomas Jefferson hated his guts; the movie did also mention Thomas Jefferson strongly opposed to such institution). And it turns out that many of the points made in the movie are quite accurate… Or maybe they seem accurate because my mind was slanted towards that way anyway.

In any case, I agree with Jason that you should arrive at your own conclusion and do your own fact checking after seeing the movie. But it does present some compelling arguments for the points it presented.

Seeing the documentary made depressed about just how in the hell is the world going to be able to sustain this kind of craziness for another 5,000 years (how old we think “civilization is). And the fact that powerful and biggest pollution contributors like the U.S. resists changes and denies facing such problems only makes it that much harder for the human race to move forward. Sometimes I feel embarrassed thinking about just what a terrible condition we are leaving this world to our children…

Powerful and jolting facts. A MUST SEE.

If you plan on seeing only one movie till the end of the year, this should be on the top of your list.

It’s been estimated that as many as 750,000 people showed up in a demonstration, forming a human wall circling, and enclosing, the Presidential Palace and his residence. The images from the news were quite impressive as the demonstrators each wore red clothing and red flashlights that represent anger. Surprisingly (to me anyway), the entire demonstration was peaceful.

* KMT ruled Taiwan was often cited as a corrupted government; but then again, KMT took Taiwan from being one of the poorest nations, having been a colony of Japan for quite a while, to among the most prosperous in the world; KMT has also been “credited” as a reason China turned communist due to excessive corruption at the top levels of the party and government branches.

>> Lodging
Curry Village

Pros: Relatively clean tents; relatively rule-respecting crowd; heating provided in some tents when it gets cold; relatively comfy mattresses; electricity outlets; 24×7 shower.

Cons: Extremely poor facility for cooking; expect to dine at on-site commercial dinning facilities or cook on top of bear-proof lockers which is extremely inconvenient; extremely LONG lines for almost everything — parking, front desk check-in, dinning… etc. Small and expensive rooms, but then every lodging facility there is expensive; tiny bear-proof lockers; can be very difficult to find parking; EXTREMELY CROWDED — feels more like a cheap, 3rd class tourist area.

Housekeeping Camp

Pros: Great on-site cooking facility (provided if you bring your own portable stove; Grace has even seen people bring microwaves!!); literally walking access to mountain and river views; lots of open space; lots of returning families here every year; easy parking (drive almost right up to your tent!); short lines for everything. Feels more like “camping” and closer to nature (except for the “cons” below). Cheap.

Cons: Relatively dirty facilities; loud and annoying crowd (LOTS of kids and “red necks” blasting loud MUSIC! Yes, music in the middle of nature! Idiots!); limited shower and bathroom hours; lousy bunk beds; VERY hard to fall asleep at night because some people stay up with loud voices (including kids at 12AM).

>> Traffic
The traffic both to and from the park are pretty nice. The only traffic jam we experienced was at the entrance of the park where everyone paid for entrance fees. Also, there’s no easily accessible gas station within the park itself; so gas up before you enter the park!

Overall traffic in the so-called Yosemite Village is excellent. Almost everybody takes the free shuttle to get around (which are supposedly made just for national parks to keep emissions low). The shuttles are very frequent and drivers friendly (and some of them humorous). But parking is probably as bad as New York City…

>> People
It seems like there are lots of people who visit the park quite often. We talked to a few families who go back to Yosemite every year as a family tradition. And contrary to what Chee-hoi says about the “Asian crowd”, I heard a lot more French and British-English speaking people than any other ethnic groups. Unfortunately smoking is not banned in the park. It was very annoying and frustrating to see smokers almost everywhere (and lots of cigarette butts!). But mostly people are considerate and nice to each other.

>> Scenes
There’s only one word for the sceneries: Majestic. There are lots of breathtaking scenes no matter what angle you look at them from. It’s no wonder that John Muir lobbied hard to keep Yosemite a protected American treasure. The only regret I had was that we simply didn’t have time to see everything; there’s simply too much to see just within car-accessible parts of the park! It’s probably wise to plan for a longer trip (like one week) if you plan on spending more time at each spot and truly really appreciate everything.

>> Food
Unless you are camping and bringing your own meals, food can be a serious issue. There are only a few spots where you can have a nice meal. The good news is, food served by the commercial vendors are comparable to your neighborhood service providers both in quality and price.

>> Bryan
Bryan did pretty well considering how long the trip was (both the drives and the duration away from home). He cried about 20% of the time in the car having never been in a car for so damn long. So it wasn’t too bad. He also slept fairly well except at Housekeeping Camp where there were lots of loud people staying up way into the night despite of “quiet hours” imposed by the camp. But nobody cares (even though we did).

Before going on the trip, I taught Bryan how to growl back to bear if we ever ran into one at the park (not sure if he understood all that, but he got the growling down). During the trip, he learned that the growling sound goes with the Mandarin word “bear”. So now if we asked where “the bear” was, he’d immediately show off by growling like a bear (which is extremely funny).

Bryan has been having trouble sleeping at night because it’s so hot and humid at night. So we have had to mobilize fans in the apartment — one to move cooler air into the apartment when the sun sets and another to cool Bryan off. The strategy is to give him a nice and cool bath before bed time and try to keep him cool with the two fans going… But last night was so exceptionally hot that we had to use THREE fans!

So now Bryan takes 3 cool baths a day to stay cool… Or else nobody gets any rest in the apartment…

On the way back from lunch today, NPR broadcasted an interview with him on Talk of the Nation. The interview was a response to an article he wrote earlier.

He sounded very enthusiastic and optimistic of what the future holds for mankind and what technology will ultimately do for us — cures of the worst diseases we experience today, super-smart “beings” that are part organic and part machine… etc. In light of how fast human genes are being patented for corporate profit today, I am not so sure just how quickly his vision can materialize even if technology progresses as quickly as he predicts. As long as there’s profit to be made out of anything from major corporations, these changes will be slow in manifestation. Why would a pharmaceutical company release a cure to cancer when it can milk billions more out of dying patients by slowly “upgrading” cancer therapies and treatments? Then again, maybe it’s just the drug companies that are evil. And he’s right about technologies being increasingly more affordable and accessible over time. Maybe in the future, we won’t be so caught up with the things we are so worried about today… Maybe it will be genetic terrorism, knowledge-based diseases and some other ingenious ideas future ultra-humans will come up with to kill off each other. But then again, according to Kurzweil, everyone’s supposed to know everything about everything… So it will be a battle of Spy v.s. Spy.

Anyway, Kurzweil’s interview is wicked cool.

But I am not alone. Two of the richest people in the world agreed.

So maybe economics, afterall, is not the answer to all problems as economists would like to belive it (does that include you, Mark?)

The first day of my economics class, the instructor promptly used variously examples to show that the essential purpose of economics is to solve basic problems of the world — food, shelter, clothing… etc. for people. But yet in a capitalistic system, it’s been theorized that 80% of the people would be poor if market were to determine everything.

A scary thought indeed.

It made me feel good reading it…

Job hunting — diploma or relevant skills,
Driving — driver’s license (different license types for different vehicles!),
Teaching — teaching certificate for k-12,
Owning a pet — pet license,
Owning a gun — gun license (boo!),
Fishing — fishing and gaming license,
… etc.

So, if something as trivial as owning a pet needs licensing, I don’t understand why there isn’t a license for being parents?! If we need a license and proof to take care of someone else’s children (in the case of K-12 teachers), is it not important enough that we get a license that shows we know how to take care of our kids as well?

Children are probably the single most important asset a society has for its own long-term survival. But yet we do everything we can to trivialize childrearing and children’s education. Ever since I took those Early Childhood Education classes, they’ve opened my eyes on just how typical parents (mis)treat their children in all kinds of circumstances.

That’s why I believe that before becoming a parent, everyone should attend compulsive but FREE government funded childrearing and education classes and pass a basic “parenthood competency exam” to receive a license. Having observed what some people do to their children, there has to be a comprehensive understanding on just WHAT children are and how to give them a healthy life. This kind of law will probably never fly, but if you think about it, the society as a whole will be a better place if one were implemented well.

Take, for example, abused children are more likely grown up to be abusers themselves. If the society can spend the initial dollars and initiatives to make sure these kinds of problems are fixed in the beginning, it wouldn’t have to spend millions of dollars later trying to patch the problem — and the “problem”, of course, is what started as an innocient child. I think I wrote about this before.

I guess issuing licenses for the right to become parents is a little too extreme. And I guess that won’t stop idiots from getting licenses either — considering how many drunk driving violations there are every year despite driver’s licenses.

Adults seem to have no problems treating ourselves with “toys” of all kinds. Of course, all justifiable in the name of productivity, utility and convenience (but seriously, when can a Rolax do that a $50 Swatch can’t?). We are also compulsive buyers who crave for the latest and the greatest model of everything. But what it comes down to is this: We are no more childish than the kid standing next to us, sobbing from the cold rejection of his parent for that Pokemon “toy” he really wanted. The only difference between us and him? Cold, hard cash and a parent standing in the way. We are no more clear-headed than he, nor are we more logical or reasonable than he.

I think males have a worse tendency in this than the female species, too. Just think about that for a moment. (Though ladies do have a tick for different types of things).

So I wonder why adults subject the double standards on kids when they themselves can’t control what kind of “toys” they think they ought to have and sometimes for unexplanable reasons. Raising kids takes a lot of responsibility. And everytime when I see a parent dragging his/her child away from a toy with unqualified reasons, I can’t help but wonder what kind of lessons s/he is teaching the child — that it is OK for me to impose this on you even though I can’t really tell you why.

When implied in a social order, this kind of subjective non-reasoning can take a toll on how we solve problems socially and politically. When a whole generation of kids growing up thinking it’s OK to have double standards, as long as it’s enforced top-down, we are going to have problems in the society. I guess I could argue that the same thing goes to raising children in general. But that’s a whole other topic altogether.

The thought of taking and getting “free” stuff almost invariably triggers the idea of “greed”. Brian and I debated over the nature of human a while ago. My position being that the world would probably go into chaos if there was no law imposed upon us. Human greed for power and money alone will probably swallow us whole. And I thought this FreeCycle thing couldn’t idealistically exist in a world of material needs.

I guess I underestimated human nature (or maybe it’s just when the sample size is so small, it skews the objectivity). It turns out that people do give away free and wonderful stuff that they truly don’t need. And as for us, we only take what we truly need and find use in. I mean, what am I going to do with that free book shelf or that free closet… or that free weight bench with weights… etc. if I don’t need them or don’t have a place for them? And I also found out that there’s a moral code of ethics in this FreeCycle community as well — if you were going to sell what you take, you’d have to be upfront about it to the giver so that s/he can decide if you can have it. I guess apparently people do follow that code (as far as we know anyway).

So my conclusion is: when anything and everything is free, maybe the society will be better off. My reasoning is that, because there’s no reason to take more of exactly what you need in the exact amount, there’s no reason to waste anything and there’s no reason to rob, steal or kill over resources. And because you got everything free in the first place, there’s no reason NOT to share whatever you don’t use with others for free! With petty pathetic issues out of the way, maybe then mankind will be able to solve real issues like hunger and poverty (because then there’d be no hunger OR poverty). And because you can’t really sell or buy anything, the “greed” factor just goes away. But of course there’s always the economics of supply and demand… But now I am beginning to think “economics” is actually quite evil because it effectively promotes (and celebrates) greed and unnecessary needs.

This reminds me of one of the StarTrek movies where one modern, naive Earthling asked a Trekkie: “How could you ever afford to build a spaceship like this?” (or something to that effect) The reply was: “In the future, the concept of money doesn’t exist. Everybody works towards the common good of the humanity.” (or sosmething like that). Maybe it’s that kind of idealism that keeps Trekkies like Murdza in the loop of StarTreks.

The thesis of the book the program was based on is that everyone should serve in the public services to really fully be a citizen of a country, but the authors of the book happened to choose the military service because of their personal ties to it and using it as a magnifier to put a few interesting ideas in perspective. One of the examples used was the contrast of the number of students from Princeton enrolled in the military 20-30 years ago (about 50% of all undergrads) v.s. today (exactly 10). The premise of the argument: Should the United States keep a military? If yes, who should serve?

It turns out that back in WWI and WWII, the Rich and the Powerful and their children were drafted to serve in the military for those wars. And as such, those who were in control, namely the politicians and other stakeholders of a war, were very careful on what to do with military deployment, precisely because they had someone very close serving in the military. Even the media reported wars differently because of own personal ties. And as a whole, the society took it personally when the nation waged wars.

While the book does not try to bash the Republicans or the Bush administration*, it points out that because today’s political and economic leaders don’t have a personal stakes and connections to the military (the example was that 70% of the Senate members 50 years ago were veterns v.s. only a handful or so today), when they wage a war or deploy troops to protect U.S. political or economic interests, they tend not to take it personally the human consequences of such actions.

I remember there’s a scene in Bowling for Columbine where Michael Moore was going around the Capital Hills trying to enlist children of the Senators and Congressmen, but nobody dared to so much as to talk about the subject. The underlying message was clear: we need a military to protect our interests as long as it’s somone else’s children doing it.

One caller mentioned a book, “Starship Troopers” (which was made into a 3rd rated movie in the 90s), where the social structure only allowed a person to become a “full citizen” after s/he has engaged in some kind of public service. I thought that idea is pretty interesting and intriguing. It’d force each individual to partake in the business of the society, not just selfishly minding one’s own business from birth to death. That kind of experience would make someone more conscious about grander social issues than pathetic personal problems (boo-hoo, Jane broke up with John).

Sometimes I wish I can just keep driving to enjoy the road and listening to NPR when they have interesting programs on….

* One of the authors is a Democrat while the other is a Republican, but both have someone they are close to serving in the military

I thought this is better than Craigslist in that when you join this group (more than 5000 members for San Jose), you know what you give/get would be free in the spirit of recycling and sharing. Grace got a saucer and a doorway jumper for Bryan when someone was giving them away. I also posted a “wanted” entry for a keyboard tray for my desk, and immediately someone offered me one for free! But it turned out that the tray is kind of heavy (all metal!) for my cheap IKEA desk….

All in all, it’s a pretty cool community of folks… And I am glad, for once, this is not a corporate commercial venture (something I can see eBay doing). The website relies on ads and donations to keep going.

It started with a powerful story of a homeless man, Murray, an ex-marine, whose medical bills came out to an estimated million dollars over the years he’d been homeless. Quite simply, for the sake of economics, maybe it’s cheaper to just solve the homeless problem than to ignore it. But then on the ethical stand point, simply treating the homeless issue as an economic problem is almost immoral and unfair (unfair to those who work three jobs to put their kids through school but still makes too much to qualify for social services). And politicians on both sides don’t want to touch this issue precisely because of that — Republicans want to be fair, and the Democrats want to treat the issue with more dignity.

The article is broken up into five parts. If you don’t have time, at least read part one and part five to get a closure to Murray’s story. But if you can spare 20 minutes, the article will enlighten you on the issues of homelessness, economics and politics (and even pollution) in a way that you’d never thought about before.
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For those who have been in at least an Econ 101 class can probably still recall why rent control actually puts more people out on the street. The same reason applies to the very basic question as to why millions of people still live in hunger EVERYDAY even though there’s an over abundance of food collectively in the world. I used to think Economics is such a dull subject, but my instructor constantly attaches a human face to every single concept we learn in class, making each theory we learn unforgetable. The more I learn about the truths of how the world operates through the goggles of economics, the more frustrated I am about how the system operates. Malcolm Gladwell puts it best in the article:

Our usual moral intuitions are little use, then, when it comes to a few hard cases [referring to the hardest cases of the homeless people]. Power-law* problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both.

* Power-law is a systematic way to prioritize solving social issues using economics. We take care of the people who cost the system most resources first and then others later. This is what causes outcry from people who think this methodology is unfair.

Harsh realities versus principles of our ethics. What a predicament.