I just don’t get it

So it turned out that lots of chinese students are still arguing on youtube over who was right and wrong about the Tiananmen massacre (or incident, whichever you want to use). I just don’t get it why they don’t see the bigger picture. 

Why don’t they focus on the question why no one can publicly discuss it in china? Why don’t they just ask why they cannot form a club and go to the very square and discuss it? 

Wasting time arguing who is right and wrong? OK, here we go: who was right and who was wrong in WWII, china or Japan? Let’s see…. Well, before we get to the answer, let’s count how many movies and books are legally out there that are about this topic? I guess I will have to borrow some fingers and toes to count it up. 

Now, let’s see how many movies or books are out there legally in china about Tiananmen? Let’s see……………….. I think my brain just protested. So can some smart, well-educated chinese student give me a hand?

This is America…Not.

A cheeseburger restaurant in Philadelphia posted a sign saying “This is America. When ordering, speak English.” And The Commission on Human Relations found the sign doesn’t violate the city’s fair practice ordinance. AOL is doing a survey right now. So far, over 90% of the surveyed think it’s not discriminatory. And among all the surveyed, only 9% said English is not their native language.

From a legal perspective, I think the city council’s judgment is right: the restaurant is not likely a state actor, so 14th Amendment doesn’t apply even if the restaurant has clear discriminatory policy. To me it is more an issue of logic and arrogance.

I agree that if I had a restaurant in the US, I would want my customers to speak English, or Spanish, or at least the language that the person who’s taking the order can understand. Yes, it would give me headaches if a person orders in some language whose name none has even heard of. It is simply impractical to hire linguists as my restaurant staff. But if I had to put up a sign, then “Please order in English” is good enough. There is no point putting some fake patriotic language, a bald eagle and a star-spangled banner on the sign, which is exactly what the sign look like in the news.

What has America to do with speaking English anyway? Does it mean it is “unamerican” to speak a language other than English? It is “unbritish” if it has to mean anything.

The funniest thing is that the owner of the restaurant said that he did this because he is concerned with increasing immigration issues. Unfortunately he’s not a Native American, which makes himself a bona fide immigrant.

Real Simple?

I notice there is a sidebar function here with some instructions about RSS. I didn’t know what that stood for, nor did I remember the three letter acronym. I only remember this small orange cubic with one third of the radiation sign in it. And I remember that it seems to be everywhere on the web and whenever I click it, it just brings more instructions that give me headaches.

Today, I was surprised and ashamed to find out that the acronym stands for “Real Simple Syndication.” If that’s so, it must mean that I’m real stupid or outdated: I never find it simple; I never know what’s that for. I feel fed up with this “web feed” thing. It makes me wonder if the fact that I find it difficult has anything to do with the fact that I still don’t know how to use Outlook, which I tried a dozen times but always stopped at the first few steps: too complicated, for me.

Now I realize that my biggest fear is not that one day my future kid(s) would  loathe me for not understanding web 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever. My biggest fear is that when the machines are taking over the human race, like in The Terminator, I might not be able to understand how that happened from the very beginning.

I hate to admit it, but…

So I was in the library, trying to catch any annoying undergrads who try to do anything stupid like walking downstairs in their noisy sandals. I opened my iTunes, and decided to check shared music. You know, you gotta know your enemy’s mentality. And the best way is…. to know what kind of music they listen to.

And it’s awesome. Some songs they listen to bring back so many memories about my junior high. It’s a time when you don’t really talk about politics to make enemies because you are more interested in beating some stupid video games than beating your neighboring country. It’s also a time when I wasn’t worried about looking for a girlfriend at all. (I guess I am kind of slow to grow up.)

Then I came across the songs by a brand named M2M. Almost all the songs are like high school (or college to the best) dating stories told from a girl’s perspective. Unbelievable. I think that’s extremey stupid. And, I have to admit that,…, I used to listen to them when I was in high school. It really made me want to invent a time machine and go back in time and punch myself in the face: “how can you listen to something like this!!!”

Well, I guess I have to admit it’s called growing up.

So Ralph is running again…

Ralph Nader entered the presidential race again days ago. And, as usual, the Democratic candidates are not happy. Calling Nader’s move “very unfortunate”, Hillary Clinton said, “I remember when he ran before. It didn’t turn out very well for anybody — especially our country.” Apparently the Democrats blame him for taking away votes for Gore, which eventually put Bush into the White House. Now they fear that he might do the same thing again.

Nader’s response was: “I think the Democrats are taking away MY votes.” Exactly. Why don’t the Democrats blame that the Republicans are taking away their votes? It is unfair and definitely childish to blame Nader for putting Bush into the White House and eventually led the US into Iraq. Those who see a third party bidding on presidency as evil don’t know the first thing about democracy and the Constitution, which they often claim to be proud of. Take Michael Moore for example: in 2000 he was a strong supporter of Nader. In a rally, he said “the less evil between two evils is still evil. Vote with your passion!” Four years later, after the war, he made fun of people who were going to vote for Nader, and he urged people to vote for a Democrat candidate. Did Nader do anything to change his mind? Was Nader responsible for the policy of the Bush administration? No. Nader couldn’t foresee 9/11 or war on Iraq. The only reason for Moore to switch side is because he is scared and had a really bad high school education. That’s also the reason for Clinton and Obama to attack Nader: they are not even confident enough that regardless of Nader’s influence, they can still get enough votes and win against McCain. Can’t they even say “yes, you did damage before. But I think you have the right to run. And I will still win the race no matter what.” Now that’s a real president.

Ultimately, if Nader can get enough support required by the law, there is really no problem for him to run. The Constitution never mentions that the US is a two party system after all. One has to realize that there has to be some sacrifice to maintain a democratic system. One of the downside is that it can be slow to respond to problems. Take Bush’s bad policies for example. In some countries, there is one easy solution to them: a coup. Then the next leader can quickly switch policies, getting troops back or whatever. Is it profitable for a short term? It could be. But such system is definitely detrimental in a long term. Applying to this case, for short term benefit, the American people can simply amend the Constitution to only let two parties compete; or they can simply assassinate Nader. Problem solved. And quick. But is this country going in the right direction? I seriously doubt it.

Let’s face it: Nader is not going to win. He might bring some damage. But he simply can’t be responsible for whatever done by the next and the last president. Because after all, it is the American people (well, a great portion of them if not all) who put the president into the White House. There is a price to pay for democracy, and no system is perfect.

Seven Years in Tibet

It’s a great movie: moving story (a true story), magnificent landscape, and good acting (maybe except for Brad Pitt’s English accent. Yes, he’s playing a German who is speaking English with German accent!).

Whenever I think of Dalai Lama, I think of my 6th grade history class when I asked my teacher what does he look like. What we were (and every kid in China is now) taught is basically “Dalai Lama is an unpatriotic bastard who tries to separate China.” Okay, that sounds evil enough. But how come we can find Hilter’s photo easily while no way we can know whether Dalai Lama has the similar facial hair? Seriously, I was only curious about his facial hair then.

Now, years later, I find the irony in the Harry Potter book (yes, you just never know that one day this wizard novel might come in handy). People never use the name “Voldemort”. Instead they use “You-know-who”. The reason is obvious: they are afraid. The reason is also obvious why there are laws banning publishing Dalai Lama’s photo, or bringing his photos into Tibet. If Dalai Lama was indeed “the evil slave owner in the old Tibet”, and the Chinese Army had done nothing but “liberating all the Tibetans from suffering”, then such laws would be nonsense: do you think it necessary or even sane to pass a law saying “no Jewish family should hang a portrait of Hitler on their wall”? Duh!

Joke of the year

If I were to give a joke of the year award, it definitely would go to the debut of Bureau of Corruption Prevention of PRC. It is even funnier to know that within one day after its website went online, it almost had to shut down because of the ridiculously high volume of visit and emails. I wonder what’s the percentage of the people who were really visiting the site seriously. For me, I visited the website for some pure holiday humor and fun. But deep down, I have to admit that I wished that most of the people visiting the website were serious, and optimistic about the future of anti-corruption, because nothing is more ironic than seeing people taking a cure-all pill for their cancer but in fact it is nothing but a pill of multi-vitamin. Yes, what an evil thought of mine. Santa should have revoked my gifts.

Now, seriously, why do I think the bureau is a joke? Because there is no way that it can work! When was the last time in history that a system successfully dealt with its corruption problem without any outside pressure such as an independant media, legal system, or opposition parties? How do you expect the bureau to work when journalists and lawyers are putting in jail for simply doing their job? Stealing money from the people is considered corruption, while depriving people of their freedom and basic human rights is not?

Some people (although I have personally met none) are optimistic about this anti-corruption action taken by the government. But they have to understand that the bureau, to the best, can only deal with low level corruption on the face. It can never solve the root of the problem. It is after all, merely one of the agencies in the corrupted system. A woman can publicly claim that she gave a blow job to the US president in the white house; she can sue the guy; the court can subpoena the guy, and he has to explain all the lies he gave to the public. During the whole process, the plaintiff or the journalists reporting the story did not spend a single day in jail. What if a woman claims that she gave a blow job to the Chinese leader? I seriously doubt the anti-corruption bureau, the court, or the media would step in at all. And I can pretty much bet where she would end up: jail or mental health facility.

Some people have a “powerful” counter argument. They would always point at the skylines of Shanghai or Beijing: “Look at it! We are changing for good, and really fast! So you dissenters should shut up!” They miss a simple logic: just because you get something good doesn’t mean that you are not entitled to something better. Only a slave would always be thankful for whatever his master gives him and asks no more; a free citizen should always be demanding toward her government.

The debut of a good-for-nothing bureau clearly doesn’t meet the minimum demand of many people. On the contrary, it is an insult to those who gave up their liberty or even life for the change of China. Among all the new things in China in 2007, this new born bureau is definitely entitled to the joke of the year award.

“Tradition” or “culture” are often the “magic words”. They stop arguments, accusations as long as someone shouts “It’s our tradition/culture!” It seems that they are the ultimate justification for some irrational human behaviors. But in fact, they are nothing more than some human habits that we either see no point of changing them (in cases that we deem the tradition or culture to be good or useful) or are too lazy to do anything about them.

Those who treat “tradition argument” as their “nuclear weapons” apparently don’t notice how many traditions they have abandoned: few of them will marry (push it back a little more, there was even no such concept as marriage, but only having sex with) their opposite sex parent, or siblings, or children. Only god knows how long the humans had been doing this in history. Thousands of years ago, a male would bring a dead animal he hunted to a female to win her heart; if you try this now in most part of the world, you don’t get to hear “I do” but “Ewww” or “freak”. Wasn’t that a tradition we (the humans) use to cherish for so long?

At a time when overfishing is threatening the entire ocean; and when researches are proving that some animals like dolphins, whales, elephants are more intelligent and social than we used to think, we should also reconsider some tradition we used to take for granted.

A National Geographic article reported whaling of Canadian Inuits, who are among the only tribes allowed to whale to a certain amount every year. The Inuits are now using rifles instead of spears. Yet, it still requires remarkable skill to have “one shot one kill”. The author of the article saw many teenagers hunting with adults, shooting like a rookie, hurting many while landing none. The injured whales usually would swim away and die somewhere else soon, which means the actual number of whales killed is higher than the one allowed by the law. Yet the adult hunters did not even care what the kids were doing with their rifles. Talking about tradition…. Those who killed whales with spears at close range were recognized as warriors. That’s the point of the tradition. Look at the so-called tradition now. The modern Inuits, by using rifles in a irresponsible way, have long abandoned the essence of the tradition. Hunting whales with rifles uncontrollably, while still claiming it’s their “tradition” subject to the protection of the law the modern Inuits (along with other pro whaling countries or tribes) are hijacking the whole world that has no taste in whaling. That “tradition” or “culture” should be abandoned and spit on, like what we did and will do to numerous traditions of ours.

Here is the ugly face of that tradition in Japan.

China is 151 years behind, at least

In Wynehamer v. People, 13 N.Y. 378 (1856), the New York Court of Appeals relied expressly on the state due process clause in invalidating a liquor prohibition statute that prohibited the use or possession even of liquor owned prior to the enactment of the statute. The New York court explained that, when “a law annihilates the value of property, [the] owner is deprived of it [within] the spirit of a constitutional provision intended expressly to shield private rights from the exercise of arbitrary power.”

One hundred and fifty one years later in China, city governments are still making regulations prohibiting city residents to own certain type of dogs, based not on breed but on the mere size of the dogs.  Once the regulations are passed, any dog falling under the target of the regulations will be terminated, regardless if the owner had the dog before or after the enactment of the regulations. And there is no sign that this cruel and utterly idiotic “rule of law” is going to end any time soon.

China might argue, buy, or force its image into the 21st century by showing its pitiful skyscrapers. However, its civil liberty has not reached mid 19th century yet.

Lining up a dozen cops in front of the court house preventing the relatives of the defendant to even observe the trial and calling it “normal procedure”? The Chinese government, the legal system, and its “constitution” can all kiss my ass.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/14/world/asia/choking_on_growth_3.html#story3