Updates on what’s going on with us
Finally got those 2 sticks of 512MB RAM I ordered from Small Dog Electronics in Vermont. I have had my PowerBook for over three years and it’s worked flawlessly (can’t say that about a 3-year-old PC running Windows). But ever since the upgrade to Mac OSX Tiger, it’s been a bit sluggish running a few “big” apps simultaneously.
Having more memory is a beautiful thing.
“I” want a memory upgrade.
I don’t think I’ve ever received this kind of efficiency from any place, private or public… I wrote KQED Public Radio regarding a segment I heard about the death penalty (which I wanted to blog about). But I just couldn’t find the broadcast anywhere on KQED or NPR. So I wrote them:
From: Shun Chu [mailto:*****@wiredatom.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 2:27 AM
To: fm < *****@KQED.org>
Subject: a segment on sister helenHello,
For the life of me I just can’t find a segment that KQED aired on Sister Helen and another man (I think maybe he’s a lawyer) in some kind of forum setting talking about capital punishment/death penalty. I can’t remember when I heard it except that it was in November, 2005. All the search results that turned up in the KQED search engine were not relevant to the segment I heard.
Please help me locate the segment (its title, time and maybe where to find it?).
Best regards,
Shun Chu
The very next day at 10AM sharp, I received a reply from KQED’s Listener Services:
From: “fm” < *****@KQED.org>
Date: December 13, 2005 10:00:15 AM PST
To: “Shun Chu” < *****@wiredatom.com>
Subject: RE: a segment on sister helenDear Shun Chu:
The program you requested was part of the Aurora Forum from Stanford on October 27, 2005.
Here is the link to the website where you can access the discussion:http://www.auroraforum.org/events.archive.102705.php
If you have trouble using this link then go to www.auroraforum.org then go to events, then archives and look for the discussion on Capital Punishment.
Hope this helps.
Paul Toulmin
Listener Services & Community Calendar
KQED Radio 88.5FM, 89.3FM, 88.1FM & 88.3FM
415-553-2261
Shweet…
Finally got a hold of a beta version of Google Earth for Mac and found where I currently live… It doesn’t seem like much because the stupid tree (big one too) cast a shadow over the one-story house…
WICKED!
And this is my grandma’s home in Taipei up on the Mt. Yang-ming…
This was our last [tiny, dinky] apartment in NYC (where Jason and Alicia were among the few who have visited and actually spent the night at!)
One important lesson I learned out of using Google Earth was, it’s fricking tough to find places through the bird’s eye view. It was relatively easy to find places in the U.S. since everything is nicely correlated to addresses. But looking for my grandma’s house in Taiwan was very hard, even though I knew how to get there from various points ON THE GROUND. Literally flying around trying to locate the exact location from a different perspective totally screwed up my orientation. I ended up having to use longitude and latitude coordinates I found from another site to locate her relatively big house.
I have a new found respect for birds, pilots and Superman.
I ranted on Jason’s blog about Tookie’s execution. I thought I might as well get into it while it’s still fresh on my mind…
Personally I think death penalty is an inefficient system of getting rid of people that the society is tired of dealing with. First of all, it takes years of waiting in line just to be executed because the death row is so backed up that a criminal would basically need take a number and wait. But partially it’s also because most people file for appeals to either get their sentences reduced, thrown out of court or just to buy more time. It’s not unusual to sit on the death row for 20 or even 30 years before someone on the death row is executed. And this is what I have trouble with: With all the time and resources spent on locking those prisoners up in maximum security prisons, why not spend that exact same amount to help them become better people? It’s alarming to see that prison constructions are being more aggressively funded than higher education these days… Not to mention that United States has the highest prison population in the world. Even more interestingly, some people have come up with the brilliant idea to make profit off of the prison system (more prisoners a private prison can lock up, more money the company gets from the government). What the hell? It’s turned into an industry of its own!!
A better solution to reduce crime and prison population is education. Invest on educating in early childhood education (many educators believe this is when personalities are developed); invest on educating the parents to take better care of the kids so that they don’t mistreat the kids and turn them into social f*uck ups; invest in facilitating individuals who are casted as “social misfits” and help them fit in!!
Again, NPR aired a fascinating insight on the topic with Sister Helen Prejean (author of “Dead Man Walking ) and Lawrence C. Marshall, an activist against the death penalty.
United State is a very Christian country. I mean, virtually all of its presidents are Christians of some kind. It’s so Christian that when President Kennedy, a Catholic (the Original Christians, I call them) was elected president, it was a big deal (WTF?!). The country is so Christian that the word God appears everywhere (or so it seems)… It’s in the Pledge of Allegiance (ver. 1.1, where the words “under GOD” were added in 1954), in currency (In God We Trust. God forbid that money is fake.), when one swears into court (put your hand on the Bible… blah blah… so will help you God. What if a Muslim wants to be sworn in on a Koran? Would they let him do it?), and when George W. Bush was elected twice into the White House under the pretense that he’s a reformed born-again Christian (what bull… more on him later).
For a Jesus and God loving nation, it sure as hell acts like one (the “hell” part). Would Jesus himself pull the electric switch?
The Bush family… ah~ what a lovely household:
Jeb and George W. Bush, among many others, have also expedited the appeals process, to execute as many prisoners in as short a period of time as possible, which increases the likelihood of error. As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush was the most active executioner in the nation, killing on average one prisoner every other week (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).
Source: The Nation
I highly recommend listening to this broadcast hosted by KQED.
Like I was saying, drug companies can sometimes be real jackasses.
What’s REALLY wrong with drug-company-published research data is, they get to conduct the researches, pick the best results to their likings and publish those they think reflect to best performing results. The same process I believe also goes to the peer reviews. There’s absolutely no so much subjectivity in the entire research from beginning to end. Also, these researches are often conducted with a very limited sample population, usually in a narrow age group, background and pre-existing conditions. However, to their defense, controlled groups are set up like that so that variables are limited and “controlled” so that they can accurately see what’s working/not working if they tweak the variables here and there. That’s why drugs are so expensive in the U.S. because at least the “drug overlords” here do conduct these researches even though the results are usually “tweaked” in favor of business, not science.
If you are a Law & Order fan like I used to be, the CEO of a drug company in one episode said it best, [somewhere along the line of] “the very few of those who die from using our drugs are necessary in the interest of advancing drug research; we save far more lives than we kill.” And then he went on to suggest the cops should be out looking for real murderers, not drug company CEOs.
Science, justice, ethics and business. Choices, choices and choices.
via [Forbs.com]
As the year draws to a close, I am also getting ready to get all my receipts in order for the year-end write offs. I spent the weekend entering everything my one-man company has for the past year into QuickBooks Pro 2006. I was relieved to have found a Mac version. Now I feel much better about myself having completed the company finances. Despite the fact that I started the weekend not knowing anything about QuickBooks and virtually nothing about accounting (let alone corporate accounting), I’d say I did okay with the help of QuickBooks Community. An accounting class is definitely in order though… I don’t want to waste time trying to figure out how to book a stupid PayPal sales refund using appropriate accounting practices AND learning QuickBooks at the same time.
Up next, personal finances with Quicken for Mac.
I do have to rant about QuickBooks for a brief moment though… The shipped-as-is version sucked big time. It’d crash for no reason in about every 10th thing I did… I’d be happily reconciling credit card charges, and POOF!!, the damn thing crashes… And I’d have to set up the whole environment again (that is if previously entered data was even saved). Thank god Intuit has an update file I can download to fix most of the crashes. But that’s modern commercial software sales for you… Get it out of the market with bugs first to get market share — fix the bugs with patches and updates later. Microsoft, more or less, perfected that method with Windows and its Office suites. Apple has been accused of similar charges when it first released Mac OSX… It had no DVD driver!!
Apparently the patent system is working out just great for America.
Excerpt from Slashdot:
“So a journalist tries to interview the top ten patent holders in the US. As he finds out, neither the USPTO, nor the patent processing companies are able to identify them. Even more surprisingly, ‘America’s greatest inventor is apparently an obscure guy in Japan who makes stuff most people can’t comprehend. And the nation’s greatest native inventor seems to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot.'”
Great. That flower pot guy I bet is ripping millions off of the system — NOT.
via [Slashdot]
Yahoo is running an article on why some Americans (and historians) consider George W. Bush the worst American president EVER! Even worse than the previous worst president, James Buchanan, which some argue that is a very tough record to beat.
Some of the reasons why GWB is being considered the worst of the worst:
- He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
- He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
- He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
- He has repeatedly “misled,” to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
- He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign ( Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
- He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
- He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
- He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic’s oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
The article ended in saying:
Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.
Yeah, I am not sure about that dickhead, I mean, Dick. He’s one shady son of a biatch. Speaking of shady characters, the entire Bush cabinet is f*cked up (with the exception of Colin Powell whose legacy was ruined by lying on behalf of GWB in front of the United Nations to make the case for the war in Iraq. Let’s face it, GWB just wanted to make his dada proud by kicking an ass that his father couldn’t. Ah~ the Bush Dynasty… America’s very own monarchy in the making.
Speaking of Dumb and Dumber, U.S. Rejects New Talks on Climate Change.
I am shocked! Say it ain’t so…
Nail fungus (also known as onychomycosis) is supposedly one of those medical conditions that doctors immediately give up on, much like my warts. It’s very hard to get rid of simply because the fungus lives comfortably underneath the hard and well-protected nails. It’s moist, warm, and for toenails, dark, all of which are perfect conditions for fungus proliferation. Ironic how the very thing that’s evolved to protect humans also turns out to be the best defense system for the fungus.
Unfortunately one of my toe nails got infected somehow, and the stupid fungus just keeps spreading under the nail, making it thick and flaky, sometimes even powderish. Apparently there are a few high tech and a couple of low tech solutions to remedy the situation…
Lamisil
One hi-tech solution is taking Lamisil tables once a day for, oh, 8 months or so. But this is probably the most stupid method. Lamisil is known to severely damage the liver beyond recovery. That’s why the stupid thing needs a prescription and close monitoring from a doctor with periodic liver check ups. It gets expensive with the pills, doctors visits and liver tests. This is an example where modern medicine does more harm than good to mankind. I can’t believe Novartis got the drug approved by the increasingly useless USFDA. I mean, who in their right mind would allow a company to market a drug that could potentially kill a patient for a medical condition that’s not even remotely close to fatal? FDA should be sued for this. It’s been said that the rate of curing onychomycosis is only roughly 30%, obviously not high enough to risk one’s life on. And because of its potential danger, only the young and extraordinarily healthy are recommended for this drug.
Anti-fungal Creams
Enough about Lamisil and FDA’s increasing incompetence. The next hi-tech solution the anti-fungal creams like Nizoral, Leucatin, or Tineacide, or you can try the cream version of Lamisil. What the hell… Lamisil cream? So there’s more than one way Lamisil can f*ck with your body?
Apparently anti-fungal creams are among the least effective form of treatment on nail fungus; they simply drive the fungus deeper into the nail bed. But even this is better than gambling with that stupid Lamisil.
Surgical Removal
The last hi-tech method that I am aware of is by removing the infected nails completely. But of course, this is a bit over the top for such pesky creature. Every surgery comes with its own risks. And it seems the fungus is not worth the risk. Even then, the odds of surviving a surgical removal, I’d bet, is still better than Lamisil.
Enough of hi-tech.
Now let’s move on to the low-tech remedies that actually work surprisingly well. It’s been said (in various forums and articles) that natural remedies are by far the most effective ways to treat the condition without giving away your right arm (or liver).
Vinegar
Some people claim that applying distilled vinegar twice a day on the infected nails changes the pH levels of the nails for 12 hours in each application. The acidic vinegar is soaked in the nail; the change in pH level makes the fungus disinterested in inhabiting in the nail. But because vinegar doesn’t actually kill the fungus, any laziness in application will allow a lapse in the pH level and gives the fungus that much more time to be around. It’s said that after about 7 to 8 months of diligent application, the infected nail will be completely grown out. That’s when you get to enjoy a fungus-less life.
I tried the vinegar. The down side of this is that it stinks (figuratively and literally). The nails change color after a few days because of the changes in the pH level. This is by far the cheapest remedy though… However, it is at the expense of your social life… It’s probably not worth it if you don’t want people to think you smell funny every time they are around you. If you can cleverly cover up the browning color of the nails and the pungent vinegar smell, this may be for the budget-minded you.
The Magical Tea Tree Oil
The last remedy, which is also highly recommended by many people, is using an oil extract from a tree native to Australia. Tea tree oil naturally possesses an anti-fungal property in its chemical make up, making it the natural choice to treat nail fungus. And because of its potency and strength, applying it twice a day, many people have reclaimed their nails in as little as three months! It can also be used to effectively treat athlete’s foot.
I started on tea tree oil today. Hopefully I will be able to blog about my success in a couple of months. A bottle of 1-fl. oz/30ml of tea tree oil costs about $10 at Whole Foods. And it smells very nice… No more stinky vinegar! My added twist to the remedy is that I actually took a nail filer and filed the nail down to as thin as possible to increase absorption of the stuff into the nail bed. I also took a blade to carve a small marker at the root of the nail so that I know when the last portion of the infected nail is gone.
My conclusion is, nature provides so much in terms of disease control without the unnecessary side affects that modern medicine usually (and almost always) comes with. People should take advantage of the proven successes of certain alternative medicines. Some people argue that such remedies do not have enough studies to quantify their effectiveness. And besides, they are not regulated by the FDA. What? Did you say the FDA? The FDA has more ties to the drug industry than George W. Bush has brain cells. Who is to say that whatever FDA approves is safer than thousands of years of trial and error with herbal medicine. In the case of Chinese medicine, every use (or combination uses of as well as their side effects) are well documented. One document in particular, is Ben Cao Gang Mu (《本è‰ç¶±ç›®ã€‹), or “The Compendium Materia Medica” (more info here) is complete with descriptions and pictures for the properties of each herb. I mean, the FDA only approves drugs after certain success rate in human testing in a given number of years. Herbal medicine has been human tested for thousands of years. And yet we doubt its effectiveness? That’s not to say that any kind of herbal remedy should be taken lightly. But to write it off completely is just plain silly.
After almost two months missing in action, Brian finally called today to catch up. We chatted for about an hour about all that has happened in the past two months. I also realized that about 1/4 of our conversation was about our kids! I mean, you would NOT find us talking about children back in the college days when we were hanging out at Gallery Expresso while playing a fine game of chess as Brian drank coffee and I indulged in my cup of hot cocoa. I mean, the topic of children would not even be close to near the vicinity of what we would be talking about. And yet today, we were all over the place about the education systems in Europe, America and Asia. How Brian and Birgit liked Laura’s preschool, and I shared with him that only 3% of all preschools and daycare centers in America are considered decent by NAEYC (National Association for Education of Young Children)… etc.
Dang it… time has changed. In a blink of an eye, so have we. Both Brian and I have transformed into parents who’s obsessed with our children’s success, much like our parents did with us.
A writer at BBC documented her journey after giving birth to her Chinese-English son in England. Being half-Scottish herself, her experience with the Chinese “superstitions” in dealing with a woman’s body after child birthing has brought her surprises.
When my mom visited after Bryan’s birth, she also softly imposed (she said they were just “suggestions” ) some of very same “superstitions” on Grace during the first month immediately following birth giving. Grace thinks most of those “rule” were just what they are, superstitions. But upon talking to Chinese women from an older generation, almost everyone swears by the importance of following those practices, including wearing socks at all times, close take hot showers with windows closed (even in summer), avoid drinking cold drinks… etc. They swear that the reason Westerners age so rapidly after giving birth is because they don’t take care of their bodies.
According to traditional medical practices, a woman’s body is at her weakest having lost all her Chi (“life force”, or “energy” ) to the child birthing process. With all her pressure ponits opened (they had to be opened to allow the birthing process to go smoothly), the woman’s body is most vunerable to “bad energy”… Thus the need to keep the woman’s body all wrapped up to protect those pressure points.
Like the author of the BBC article, Grace also suffered some consequences from not following a couple of the strict rules. My conclusion is, what my mom said may be superstitions, but they’ve been around for thousands of years, and there’s a good reason why generations after generations of women obey those practices religiously. Simply ignoring the tradition is to ignore thousands of years of collective wisdom, even if that means there’s no immediate scientific proof for any of those things yet.
For more information, check out the following sites:
Grace and I never really celebrated Christmas. But it was refreshing to have Jason and Alicia invite us over to help decorate their Christmas tree (which Jason insisted that he paid his left pinky for). To me, Christmas in America is just another opportunity for corporate America to push sales volume (through the roof!). CNN Money estimates:
The holiday shopping season is crucial for retailers, many of which chalk up 50 percent or more of their annual sales and profits in November and December.
Reference: The race for holiday bargains is on
Scary.
On Black Friday this past November, Hanny and Widodo told the story of them spending two hours in line just to pay for their purchases. And that was around mid-night when the stores decided they’d start the sales early. This whole thing got so heated that Target even started a wake-up call service to make sure people go shop at Target in the wee hours.
So anyway… I just thought this whole Christmas thing got too commercialized in the U.S. that it’s lost whatever the original meaning of the day was. The only thing associated to Christmas/Thanksgiving are sales figures, bargain discounts, food, and football. I am sure Jesus Christ the Savior of guilty souls of this earth will really appreciate that when (and IF) the Judgement Day comes (it seems to be coming every 100 years but never really did… Whoever actually wrote the Bible must be thinking “suckas!” ).
Dang it… I drifted off of the main topic too far again…
The whole “mini event” of Christmas tree decoration was actually interesting. I have never helped decorated a Christmas tree before. Grace couldn’t help because she had to make sure Bryan stayed asleep; he was extremely cranky today at their house. He’s only acted like this maybe a couple of times before. We think he was just too overwhelmed with the new environment, being out of his daily routine and was really tired. Without fail, playing some classical music fixed him right up and put him to snooze mode almost immediately. This in itself deserves its own blog entry…
After having some incredible home-made vegetarian pizza, we watched “Kung-fu Hustle” per Alicia’s request. For some reason, some scenes in that movie are funny everytime I watch it.
Then we chatted about children (adoption, foster homes, childrearing in general), some politics, how drugs/medicine are so fricking expensive in America, and a bunch of other things. One topic Alicia brought up I thought was particularly interesting was the advancement on the research of AIDS. Apparently a group of prostitutes in Kenya seem to be immuned to the AIDS virus according to the PBS special they watched. Looks like a vaccine is imminent.
We promised to get them out to Milpitas for vegetarian dim sum. Yum! Looks like my aspiration of becoming a vegetarian may not be so lonely if we just hang out with them more… In search for a vegetarian dim sum for them, I accidentally found GrubGirl, a pretty cool blog on restaurants and food. Speaking of food, I miss Manhattan… Food selection is quite limited in California compared to the varieties in NYC. That’s something no city can ever take away from New York City…