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Brian got me hooked on Ray Kurzweil a couple of months ago. Now I see his name everywhere.

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.

There, I said it.

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.

Remember all those money making emails you get from Africa (“I am the son of the late Price _______. I have a great proposition for you…” )? I have always wanted to reply them with a plan to scam them but never got the time to really think about how to do it. But apparently a group of people did.

It made me feel good reading it…

We live in a day and age (and specifically in Western Worlds, a society) where almost everything we do needs some kind of proof, certification or license to show that we are capable of doing what we say we can do.

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.

When taken with a broader definition, “toy” can mean a lot of things — gadgets for geeks, frivolous and over-priced show-off transporations, relationship between two people, or, simply, just something to play with.

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.

I wrote about FreeCycle earlier this month. So far the experience has been mostly positive. But I thought I’d share some insights I have over our experience with FreeCycle.

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.

While driving to my consulting gig today, NPR aired an interesting piece on how the composition of the U.S. military personnel today has affected how the military and its engagements around the world are reported, portrayed and politicized.

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

One of Grace’s mommy friends told her about an interesting online (but yet local!) community called FreeCycle. The free service is basically a collection of local residents in your area who are part of a larger collective “recycling” community. The idea is to recycle what you don’t want and give them to someone else who may find good use for them. Almost every major city in the world has a FreeCycle group (yes, even Freehold, NJ, Murdza!).

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.

After getting off of Skype with Brian ealier this morning, I started reading an article (Million-Dollar Murray) he sent me from earlier. The article is so fricking long that I had to break it up and read it thoughout the day. But it was more than worth the time it took to read. I haven’t read a powerful article like this in such a long time.

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.

C|Net has an interesting article on companies using organic methods to repel or eliminate undesired bugs for argricultural purposes. Great idea!

Organic biopesticides comprise only a small fraction of the overall $30 billion pesticide market, but they are growing rapidly–22 percent a year thanks to technological, regulatory and market forces. By 2010, biopesticides could account for more than $1 billion in revenues, according to some estimates. Other companies in the field include Valent Biosciences, Suterra, Certis and Nutra Park.

The business has come a long way from previous years when biopesticide scientists were viewed as modern-day snake oil salesmen. A number of start-ups formed in the 1990s were based on sound science from university labs but cratered in the dot-com meltdown.

AgraQuest, which has $10 million in annual sales today, was one of many companies that, back then, canceled plans to go public. But now new investors such as Texas Pacific Group Ventures are aiming to rapidly grow the company’s revenue by expanding relationships with farmers and retail outlets like Wal-Mart.

To maximize agricultural production, pesticides are not going away. But instead of using harmful chemicals, leveraging nature against nature is probably the best and sustainable way to go! I mean, how much longer will it take for those commerical chemicals to reach a level where all food chains are contaminated with them that we won’t be able to eat anything without dying from one disease or another caused by the chemicals?

I am taking my first (ever) class in economics in this quarter at UCSC Extensions. And for the first time, the world makes perfect sense to me through the eyes of economics and math. And this is the only time where math has ever made any sense to me outside of the realms of daily application.

The best way to describe my experience is Jonathan Goldstein’s description of Eve’s experience with her first “nibble” of the Fruit of Wisdom… “It’s like trying on a pair of new glasses for the first time…” An experience that is both dizzying and exonerating.

Sweet. Maybe I will take the next class in macroeconomics!

Brian and I got into a pretty lengthy discussion about “limitations” certain governments placed on the idea of “Freedom of Speech” over Skype. This came about when some moron in Germany (or was it Austria?) got arrested for preaching that Holocaust never happened. Apparently it’s illegal to deny this very historical fact.

Brian thinks there shouldn’t be any limitations at all on freedom of speech. The government should have used abundance of true information to fight dis-information. While I agreed with most of his points, I thought maybe it’s a good idea of have some oversight to ensure certain “facts” will remain factual for futural generations (as opposed to having even a shred of doubt about the integrity of that “fact” ). Or else you end up with something like Japan to whom the Rape of Nanking never took place. And when enough people buy into the idea and gathers enough momentum, dis-information just might overtake the facts, and that very dis-information may become the “fact” that it just replaced.

In the context of social engineering and group dynamics, Clay Shirky thinks that certain amount of moderation is always a good idea in light of what programmers have learned from the early days of the Internet. He argues that when freedom of speech is truly “free”, online communities always fail and burn in chaos. There are certain kinds of behavioral traits in humans that will always surface. So in essence, there can probably never be true freedom of speech for as long as the humans are in charge of things. Without the rules of law, can civilized socieities stay civilized? Based on the findings of online forums Clay Shirky cited, the short answer is NO.